she is doing to bring herself out into the world. she is diabetic. she has been pretty active in the committee working with kids, or talking to kids, going to baseball games, and i think it is a really solid tory thing when somebody was sequestered by the court will go out into the world. as a writer, is a generalist reporter, i am looking for quotes, and out of an opinion, i find it difficult to get a good " out of a sotomayor opinion. as a there was one question that she asked asking from the representative of this did california when the going to get around to avoiding people sitting around in their feces for days?

it is a little plain to the crowds, i think, but it speaks to her background. she likes the details. she is really persistent. she will not let go of an advocate once she gets their teeth into that and she will pursue that. she is peerless in asking questions -- she is a fearless. she will ask the way more frequently than justice taken-- kagan. she is unafraid participant, which i think is a good thing. she seems to fit right in. >> a couple of thoughts. i would like to agree with everything going back to chief justice roberts, justice alito, justice sotomayor, and

justice kagan. they have made it different kinds of contributions and bring in different qualities. i like to come back to the term of next term and why it could be determined this century. we could see, and we may not because this is all out there and who knows but the constitutionality of the health care law, the constitutionality of the defense of marriage act. the california same-sex marriage case and fisher versus taxes which has the potential to be the biggest affirmative-action case ever. we could see all them decided next june. it is conceivable, and less likely, that we should see them decided by 5-4 and it happens to

be a presidential election year which will make it all the more dramatic. >> in addition to medicaid reimbursement, there is the fcc indecency regulation. let me pose one question before recognize others. stewart and i appreciate your partial anti-originalness discussion. even though that is true that the supreme court level, because the cases are very hard, there are no clear answers. one of the other ways of looking at this is that there are four first amendment cases, there may

be five. we mention video games come a funeral protesters, pharmaceutical marketing case from vermont, the years on a campaign finance law. there are splits among the conservatives on most of those. the one more simple explanation for them which some of the wall have noted is that there is a general park towards greater first amendment protection. that is the one unifying factor. do you think that explains some of the trends in the court? >> i think it does. it is striking. you can go back to the steven's case involving the use of dogs being tortured. there is a strong free-speech tie-breaking tendency. that does cut across the ideological lines.

people who seem to be dissenting fairly on our justices alito and justice robert -- breyer, who are often thought to be on either side of the deal logical spectrum. as someone who has a personal stake in the first amendment, i read their opinions with great respect and i have some doubt whether the court has been right of the california videogame case, for example. the arguments for both sides are very strong, but in a descriptive matter, the court has been very strong on first amendment rights that pleases some people and displeases others. >> will you explain the jokey began with about thomas's dissent on the video games? >> the joking reference was to

justice thomas's, i thought, dissent talking about the founding fathers child practices. i want to talk about the point related to the first amendment case that i agreed to about the expanded view of the first amendment. in some cases, the funeral protest case, they were seen as free speech case. the commercial free-speech case from the pharmaceutical advertising company in vermont, the arizona case, and citizens united, it is seen as a victory by the business-friendly, fat cat friendly roberts court. it is not seen as a victory of the expansion of free speech which seems to be a lazy narrative and it is irks some of the chamber of commerce for the

united states won 57% of the cases they entered this year which is just barely above breaking even. i believe that this court is sympathetic to business from their background and so on. it is irritating for me to see their decisions were the client that wens may be the business, but this is a as irksome to hear about liz cheney talk about al qaeda lawyers. they are attorneys representing the event -- vindication of a constitutional principle. what is pro-big business is actually sometimes more fundamentally seen as pro-first amendment. >> i could just add a footnote to that. it is interesting that justice brier, i think it, brought this out to discuss the commercial

speech issue. there are some cases in which businesses are winning and some of them as a strike me as corp. first amendment issues. citizens united is a core but first amendment speech for corporations issue. they do not seem to have much to do with the corporate governance for self expression when is someone trying to put together a lot of information about who is taking which prescription and which doctors are prescribing which so they can market their drugs more effectively. is it first amendment case, but it does not feel like one to me, or apparently justice breyer. >> the same justices that dissented, including the female justices, joined at scully of -- scalia's broad view on violent

video games. they are not necessarily about how we organize ourselves either. >> they are the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. that is not the way that most people react to that. there is more of their real free-speech issue there. >> they did not write separately. it is hard to square. one was decided on thursday that was anti-commercial speech to lower standards and lower scrutiny and then the next one on monday? >> i do not think the majority in the video game case conceded this as a commercial speech case. this was taken purely as free speech akin to shakespeare, a fairy tales, or novels.

it was not about marketing video games are commercials for them, but about the core expressing value of the medium itself. >> what else do you want to add? >> i wanted to cite another of justice sotomayor's questions. the law struck down refers to the violent actions against human figures that take place in the video game. she asked, "what if the video game figure is half human, half vulcan?" so she does have some respect -- questions of perspective. >> i think there is an issue with other justices about star trek after that. they all told a joke and if you

are on the lecturn, oyou must laugh. victor, ron, do you guys have the first question? wait for the microphone so that the heritage internet yours and c-span viewers can hear the question. >> i think this was a combat force to work on our regionalism. i know that it is common to say that the framers did not think about equal protection. of course. they had slavery that. brown vs. board of education, the brief of thurgood marshall argued this in terms over regionalism. wants to originate slavery, it is really hard to justify the government making decisions and casting our burden because of your color. i do not think it is a fair

claim to say that even original lists can see this. i do not. >> i am not sure that i understand you, but on the same day as brown vs. the board of education came boeing vs sharp which desegregated the schools in the district of columbia. the supreme court had a problem there because there was no provision that anyone could claim it was never designed to prevent racial discrimination by the federal government. it was the federal government there ran the schools in the district of columbia so they made up a process doctrine, of which it was ridiculed back in the 1970's. i think it was a justifiable result that just because i think you need to look at original meaning and say you will not do what it says. i do not think you can descend boeing vs schar on the grounds

of the original meaning. i would be interested in how you would. >> we agree to disagree. the court said part of due process is that you do not treat equal unequally. casting about burden based on a color or server to is exactly that. it is true that washington, d.c., had segregated schools. but it was wrong, at that point, by the washington, d.c., a committee which was a bunch of old people in suits from the south. but former slaveholders were related to them but just one generation. it is an inherent part of the process that we not pass out benefits and burdens just because of the color of skin. that is what burger marshall argued on behalf of the naacp.

-- that is what thurgood marshall argued. >> victor? ok. we will call on non-panelists. >> thank you for your time. i am just a concerned citizen from virginia. regarding the video game case, how is it that the supreme court can actually balance the first amendment versus the compelling state interest to protect the children along with police powers as well as morality clause? i'm interested to see how that could happen and how the justices come about figuring out which one would tromp the other? thank you. >> who wants to take this? >> when the courts of the case, it was not so clear how it would

come out because the lower courts, for one decade, had struck down at video-game sales because there was no car route for violent content like there had always been a for obscenity. as i thought about this case, it seemed to me that there was a strong possibility that the court could, if not, uphold the statute as is or think that a more narrowly drawn statute could pass. one thing going on the court was in the strains affecting deregulation of miners. you had people on the court extending a more but bridget maternal listed towards miners in the eighth amendment cases, the death penalty for juvenile laws, limiting life without parole, cases, and so forth. you have a view that younger people are different there.

on the right and the court, you have more of a view that they just do not have that many rights, if any. nine of their justice thomas, or their rights can be curtailed as we saw in the frederick case which involved the banner that said, "bong hits for jesus." did knowledge that was a free- speech activity of the stated interest in suppressing statements that may undermine the anti-drug message from the first amendment rights of miners. i thought if you combine those two strains together that you could find a way in this court to uphold that statute or a version of it. as it turned out, the court went back to basically the very traditional first amendment analysis that says the government's job is not to suppress an affirmation and when it comes to, particularly

outside of school, they were, i think, just very concerned about creating an exception which could easily be bootstrapped to all kinds of other violent forms of content that the state decided were damaging. there was no evidence admitted that showed that video games had ever incited any crimes. there is evidence that a record albums have a tendency to kill themselves and claims against those artists were dismissed, but there was residents -- evidence that it can reflect behavior. there were unwilling to let those bodies draw those lines. what's the danger of knowing too much, because i thought all along it would be a simple decision by the courts because i did not delve as deeply into the string of cases except for the general speech expansion view of the court.

i thought to be so simple that i was waiting for the stupid decision to come out. it took 235 days, the longest wait for any decision, which was a surprise to me. i point out that the decision was 7-2, two justices on whether there may be some more narrowly tailored rule or law that will allow the state to protect children. in this case, i was blind to what was really going on, but in the end, the story that a crew- roasted up. "the librarians were doing the study. >> just too bad, the way the study is done has lots to the categories. there is a limited set of assumptions not covered by the first amendment. obscenity is one and then there is obscenity light and you can protect children from playboy.

that has been the law for quite a while. it seems to me that you just focus on that, we will protect the children, but just as alito's description of what we are not protecting them against, there was the description. "he pretends to grasp an ax, here's the fun of the acts hitting the head, sees the split skull and beals the sensation of blood on their face. if it was my kid, i would rather him read "playboy." >> thank you. i'm from the institute of justice. i want to challenge something you said about the justice is being more deferential. if we look at the institution through which you are proposing they differ, whether seems to be

a strong institutional dynamic to cause them to rationalize the constitutionality of what they already want to do. there's some evidence that they do not seem to take seriously their duty to die with the constitutionality of their legislation to begin with. and if we have a case presenting a credible constitutional right, on what basis would we defer to an institution that has those hallmarks, if you agree with, describe them? >> you have me there. i cannot disagree with how you describe congress and its irresponsibility when it comes to constitutional issues. that creates a case for the court, which takes those things much seriously and worked through the more thoughtfully in a sense, i would rather have the court deciding those issues than congress. i do question the legitimacy to the extent that it is 5-4, a one vote majority, and bricks along partisan lines as to who appointed home.

are compromising the idea of democracy when the subject of decisions by a 5-4 majority of unelected people overturned it the state laws in the u.s. congress, arguably darks the unionize of we have a better congress. >> jordan? >> from the alliance defense fund. i believe four of the justices are over 70. ginsburg, kennedy, scalia, and breyer. do you think any of them will leave after the next presidential election? but justice kennedy wait for a republican? are they all going to stay on well past the president's term is elected in 2012? >> the justice ginsberg say she had a piece of art that is being

loaned out and that was her way of saying -- >> it seems to me that the sitting justices would look at the example of justice o'connor who left the court to care for her ailing husband. my distinct impression is that justice o'connor really wishes she was still on the court. once you're there, you really do not want to leave unless you are justice souter. i do not know what their health conditions are like, but i think they will hold on to their seats regardless of whether or not it is an election year. >> as justice scalia likes to point out, they work for free. it is really their contribution to the country's budget problem. >> just a quick point on the confirmations. several weeks ago, the u.s.

senate took up the trial court nominations for john mcconnell. the voted to sustain a filibuster. it was broken role in the fourth time in history. this was for a district court judge. i would sit as 33 republicans are the filibuster caucus will filibuster the next supreme court nominee, whoever it is, because it is more politically advantageous to fight rather than to conciliate. >> i have a feeling that if i just as retired one year from now that there'd be no replacement confirmed by the election. the justice to people speculate most about, justice ginsburg, because of her age, knows that. if she was going to retire to be replaced by president obama and not a gamble on who wins the

next election, i think she would know that she should have done that are ready. i would not expect to be retiring. i think that is probably good news about her health. >> i am with the washington legal foundation. you spoke briefly about the supposed supreme court bias which i think is a favorite topic of most journalists. i just wanted to ask quickly because there was a senate hearing last week at which robert all testified to address this exact subject. i wanted to know your thoughts as to why they have this hearing and what effect it will have. >> this was the senate judiciary committee hearing on the walmart case. the senate does what they do which is to broadcast its prospective if the court makes it politically unpopular decision to strike down a long on flag-burning, for instance

that congress is typical response will be to show they are happy with the decision. i thought it was a legitimately political exercise for the court to demonstrate its displeasure with the the ruling side, 1.5 million rowling women impressed by walmart, or whatever the case was. it seems to me that it was not typical for either party to have engaged in the exercise. i did not know what they would have accomplished. >> there will be efforts in congress to try to overthrow a lot of these. the house would not over the same ones the senate would. since robert is in the audience, he may want to ask the next question, but a part of this testimony to congress it was of the supreme court is deciding many of the opinions that they did not like according the statutes and invited them not to rail against the court.

as the previous panel noted in the generic verses prescription drug warning that all the justices agreed that there was a crazy result in there were almost inviting the court to step in. victor explained why it was not so crazy, but anyway. we have maybe one or two more questions. >> we spoke earlier about free speech carried -- about free speech. all 50 states have passed legislation against cyber bullyinh and some states have

passed for corporate bullying. the uc a correlation between what the courts have held so far and between these regulations? >> anyone? >> i do not think a case like that has gone to the court yet, so it depends on the fact and how they will be applied in this state. is it simply giving an opinion about someone that is not flattering? does it become more like harassment? i think it in the very fact- specific. >> even if children off of a school campus harass another child. in one case, and make greater proposed that his principal was a pedophile. he was suspended and was upheld. they're taking this on a case by case basis.

corporate would be the same way. if you harass in economic and market barman, you can still be held accountable. even though it may just be speech. >> i recommend one of the professors from ucla law school in their right about how these laws are troubling on first amendment grounds. when all this in part because the commission on civil rights, they take a related issues. one simple answers just because the politicians call something "harassment" does not mean that it fits the legal definition. that does not taken up first amendment protection. you're correct in identifying a very interesting and fascinating area of first amendment

jurisprudence in the future. i think we are near the end of our hour. please join me in thinking this panel. -- thanking the panel. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> today on c-span, the u.s. institute of police looks at training police programs run by different u.s. agencies. later, proposed changes to social security and their impact. after that, and even from 1997 with former first lady betty ford to spoke about her years in the white house and the resignation of richard nixon. remembering that it for today. she died last night at the age of 93 -- remembering betty ford today. she worked to reduce the social stigma of the drug and alcohol abuse and addiction and became the founding inspiration behind the betty ford center. another former first lady, nancy reagan, praised her work educating women about breast cancer. next come remarks from 1999 when she and president ford won the congressional gold medal. she was honored for her work on

behalf of those eight alcohol and drugs. here's a portion of that ceremony. >> thank you, mr. president, and all of the wonderful people who are here. good afternoon. i feel as though my chest is bursting with all of these absolutely fantastic things that were said. i thought i was going to sprout wings. to me, this is so special to be here and see my husband honored on this occasion. it has miso fall of gratitude. -- it has me so full. to share with this is beyond anything i could have ever possibly imagined. mr. speaker, as you probably know, yours is the only job in this town that jerry ever really

wanted. fate has a way of overtaking the best laid plans. as a result, we did live in the white house for 2.5 years at the other end of pennsylvania avenue. believe me. i am not complaining about fate. this house, to me and gerald, the people's house, it will always be our tour home. for 25 years, and i have steve and susan here to absolutely verify this, but this majestic building was a friend to me and to our children. as they grew up, we spent countless hours in both the house and senate galleries listening to debate and

absorbing the legislative workings of the representatives of the people. standing here now, i cannot help but remember that cold and blustery day on january 19th, 1977, when we took a leave of washington. following president carter's generous remarks and tribute to my husband, and all that he had done to heal our country, we found ourselves leaving the capital and walking past a row after row of capitol police. for many years, they had been more than just friends to us. in a very real sense, they were like an extended family. as america came to know during that tragic event, they know -- not only protect, but they stand

guard over democracy. today, i am glad to see some of them here as well as all of you who have enriched our lives beyond any measure that you can possibly know ago and to you, mr. president, for all of your remarks and all of you who honor us with your presence here. i think you -- thank you. this is one that we will treasure and never forget. to all of those who have blessed us with your friendship over these years, it is wonderful to see you, and please accept our gratitude and love all the you have been, for all that you are to gerald, me, our children, and

most importantly to our country. thank you very much a. [applause] >> elizabeth m. ford died last audit the a job 93. she will be buried alongside her husband in grand rapids, mich. the house doubles back in on new for morning our speeches and to o'clock p.m. for legislative business. they begin work on a 2012 energy and water development funding bill and we expect to see work on amendments monday. also, a bill real authorizing the federal flood insurance program.

this includes funding several things. you can follow the house on c- span live. >> this weekend on c-span2, is everything in new about the ok corral wrong? we tell a different story about whitewater, doc holliday, and others. we look at the long more of a -- long war of islamism. we talk about the challenges facing our southern neighbor. look for the entire schedule on booktv.org. >> next, the u.s. institute of peace holding a discussion on training programs in foreign countries run by different u.s. government agencies.

seven agencies train and equip police in iraq, iran, pakistan, and dozens of other countries. this is two hours. >> good morning, everyone. thank you very much for coming. i am the director of the center for security sector governments here at the u.s. institute of peace. i would like to welcome everyone, and i would like to welcome c-span who are responsible for the robotic cameras you see all around us. we have had over 250 r s e p's for this event and the size of the turnaround -- turout for a friday on july speaks to the interest of this topic in washington.

in the last gao report, there were seven agencies involved in providing police assistance to 107 countries. congress temporarily put a stop to efforts with the passing of section 660 of the foreign assistance act which banned the police assistance using foreign assistance funds. almost immediately the challenges of controlling narcotics trafficking, international terrorism, and the need to restore public order during peace operation starting in haiti in the balkans brought about new legislation that funded a variety of assistance

programs. during the 1960's, the number of police training programs in the forces we tried to create, and many of us were a part of that, were somewhat modest. in haiti in 1994-1997, the restrained a police force for the first u.s. haitian national police and we trained about it to 300 cadets. in 1999, a program started in kosovo which trained about 5500 personnel. this copley's assistance efforts have expanded radically with involvement in afghanistan and iraq. as we will hear, the u.s. as crated a police force in iraq that may number as many as 400,000 personnel. the goal of the u.s.-led nato training effort is at 157,000

police and the cost of this training program to the u.s. alone is about $1 billion per month. today, police assistance programs in the government are in multibillion-dollar effort led by the departments of defense and the department state but involving a number of other federal agencies. as programs have grown in size and cost, they also grow in kind. as you saw from the exhibition here on the screen, policing around the world is heavily impacted by history, culture, legal systems, and level of development. police forces differ markedly, so do they differ by agency and the country in which they work in. today, we have assembled a panel of very distinguished experts to discuss the various approaches that the u.s. government takes towards police training in

foreign countries. you have the bad reviews for our speakers, so i will not do that. the speakers will come to the podium in the order that they are introduced. first of all, the director of the u.s. office of democracy and a government which oversees u.s. aid's worke. he will introduce john buchanan, the author of usaid's new field guide for civilian law enforcement in developing countries. we're very pleased to have him here today. in the past, he has been a senior adviser on police issues. today he is the deputy director and i am one of the only people who remember international training assistance programs. welcome.

the second speaker will be michelle greenstein, the deputy director of the office of criminal justice assistance and partnership in the state department. she is another old friend. good to see you back here. the third speaker is a general u.s. army retired, a senior fellow with the institute for the study of war. welcome to the institute for the study of peace. [laughter] >> hopefully one leads to the other. >> helpfully. today, he is here to talk about his experience as commander of the multi-national security command in iraq in which she helped to create the iraqi police force. our last speaker is the director for the center of an invention -- innovation and what we call

the security dialogue program, a very innovative approach that brings together police in civil societies to solve local problems. we have a great lineup of speakers and i think the best thing to do now is to get started. dr. young? >> been morning, everyone in. it is turning out to be a dog day of summer. we would like to thank the u.s. institute of peace for hosting this session today. for 25 years,usip has provided post-conflict reconstruction and i salute their president, dick solomon, there vice-president, charles nelson, and all the colleagues at usip for this

important national resource. with the opening of this beautiful building, it is even more important than before. for those of you watching on c- span, let me pay you a picture that you cannot see from your television. we're located here in this beautiful new building on the far western edge of the national mall. we are on navy hill. if you look down to the window to the stunning atrium, you can see in the foreground the lincoln memorial and the backdrop in the distance is the washington monument. way off in the distance is the jefferson memorial. if you have really good vision, you can see some of the other monuments on the national mall like the vietnam memorial, the memorial to world war ii, the korean war memorial, and the new memorial springing up to martin luther king, jr.

as we look out of the building of this important institution, we welcome thousands of new visitors to the national mall and this stop. as these visitors from the u.s. and around the world pay zero mosh to american soldiers and peacemakers -- pay homage to soldiers, they will be able to come to this building and learned about how we help to resolve the conflict of the 21st century. i would like to give a special thanks to bob up. as many of you know, he had a long career in the state department as a career foreign service is officer. instead of going fishing, he launched a second career almost two decades ago and has been a leader for these last decades in security sector reform. his leadership and now at usip

serves up as a capstone in this, his second career. as you know, the securities sector governance sector is one of several innovations. i would argue that the title itself, security sector governance center, is one of the most voluble contributions, for it argues it through its title the need to root security sector reform and processes in the democratization of the society's we are trying to assist. bob and all of your colleagues at usip, we share your understanding of the important linkage between peace, security, democracy, and human rights. we all believe that sustainable

peace, justice, and security depends come to a larger degree, on democratic development and protection of human rights. sustainable peace depends on the reform and democratic reform of national security forces. bob has written persuasively that the success of the transition started by the arabs bring will force them to rely on the democratization and security forces there. my colleagues and i appreciate usip's leadership. on behalf of my boss, the director and the administrator for the humanitarian assistance, i bring you all warm greetings from colleagues at usaid. several weeks ago, out there was an informal dress and titled,

"the expansion of human welfare." he argued that in 2011, 25 years after the founding of usip and usaid in democratic governance, still many in the community are uncomfortable with the idea of democratic governments, human rights being an integral part of the larger pursuit of human development. dr. schar argues, "we cannot rely on the and stability provided by autocrats and limit our assistance to groups that have been endorsed by government. instead, we will seek real democratic reform as a means to further peace and give people the ultimate voice in their own destiny and development. if we can expand our engagement with citizens, if we can successfully integrate democracy, right, and governments in our portfolio,

and if we can embrace the momentous opportunities presented by the arab spring, then we can deliver a true or understanding of human welfare." that is an important part of assistance in governance, to support the democratization of military police forces and intelligence services. civilian police, i would argue, given their large presence in the daily lives of citizens are perhaps most important of these institutions in the larger framework of human development. that is what u.s. aid currently conducts 48 police assistance programs across 30 countries in the world. we support civilian police to combat trafficking of persons in mexico, nepal, and cambodia. we support civilian police to conduct community-based crime

prevention in guatemala and el salvador. we support civilian police to protect human rights in colombia and ethiopia. a survey of field emissions showed that 75% of our mission said that they felt they were very high on their priorities. we are very proud and excited about the new field guide for assistance and civilian law enforcement in developing countries. the guide draws lessons from our past and provides a conceptual framework and a practical road map for air future programs. the quadrennial review led by secretary of state clinton and dr. shaw last year issued a report asking usaid to establish

a center but -- of excellence. we would be proud to replicate this for the top of publications we seek to produce in this new center of excellence. the author of this report served four years in usaid and recently went to be deputy director there. he worked on this guide for a full three years and traveled around the developing world and a beaming many people in order to put this together. as important was his background in international law enforcement and his many years as a police officer in the phoenix department in arizona. john explicitly wrote the guided to express the whole government approach to mirror and embraced the call of the qddr in the

approach to security sector reform. this is an aspiration toward closer cooperation between usaid and our partners in the departments of state and justice. finally, i would like to thank some colleagues from my office to have all helped with this report and organize this forum today. john, thank you for your work. we miss you, but we look forward to a further collaboration. >> thank you very much, david. good morning, everybody. thank you to the panel, certainly, and to bob and his staff for all of the work done to put this together. thank you for coming today. although i am not quite sure if you wanted to come see the new building or listen to us, whenever your motivation, thank you for coming.

i want to spend a few minutes providing a little bit of background. thank you for your brief reduction and an outline of where we have been and where we hope to go. i would like to talk about the intent behind field guide and some of the main themes that hopefully come through to anyone who picks it up to take a look at it. my experience goes back to haiti in 1994. i was still engaged as a police officer in phoenix at that time. one of the main lessons i walked away with, which i would assume others would when they look back to their first experience in that type of situation, is the difference in the problems that we were facing their and the problems i was familiar with in phoenix. obviously, to say it is a different world is an understatement.

since that time, it seems to me that the need, the desire for good and effective police assistance has grown even as the world has shrunk. we are all familiar with the problems associated with globalization and crime that crosses borders now more than ever. that is a bit of my brat ground that i brought to this task in writing the field guide. -- that is a bit of my background. we engaged internally in a lot of discussions about this type of work. we were not aware of any sort of a guidance, any sort of documents that existed in the field to help people that are charged with the difficult task of trying to engage ways and means to assist police agencies that are developing in other places. clearly, the officers in the field and bond usaid missions were very familiar with the problems that crime creates.

it obstructs education, economic development, and certainly it affects the ability to govern. putting all that together and the creation of a practical guide was certainly job number one so that people in the field could use it. there were other motivations, too. we wanted to increase the understanding across the community of interest, which you represent, about the complexities and difficulties of providing good police service. corollary to that, i also wanted to clarify what is required to maintain high standards in a police organization. to say that is a full-time job as a gross understatement. i even wanted to, in some way, provide a baseline backdrop for

discussion to improve the state of the argument, if possible. i also wanted to reinforce the fact, and this echoes david's comments, that effective and legitimate criminal justice services are the cornerstone of development work in a democracy. in most parts of the world, police are the most identifiable representatives of the government. because of that visibility, police corruption, incompetence , it can taint the entire enterprise. the ripple effects are well known. some people say that a large part of the success in life is just showing up. for police, it has to be more than that. i like the term "credible presence." it says a great deal about what an individual officer or organization needs to strive for and can attain.

maybe the best way to explain this idea is explaining what it is not. this is a short story about a conversation i had with a cab driver earlier this year in a developing country. i asked him, "if you are walking down the street with your family and there is a police officer coming the other way, what do you do/" he said, "we crossed the street and go the other way." even with all of my experience, for some reason, that just fell on me like a ton of bricks. that simple question and answer, i think, it encapsulates what we are trying to accomplish when we go to a country to help people but why we're trying to do it. he probably had good reasons for

that answer. the reaction of a citizen to the police agency that routinely operates outside of internationally accepted standards. the concept of public service that probably does not have any place or meaning in that police organization and certainly does not have a place in the culture of that organization. that is a pretty significant. to get your head around, at least for me. the relationship the democracies can build and the expectation of prayer and lawful governments with a reasonable sense of public safety on the one hand and exchange for a level of trust and good citizenship on the other never materialized for that cabdriver, and probably not for most of his fellow citizens. the result of that broken contract is not just seen in the

relationship between police and citizens but across the broad spectrum. pick up the newspaper and read the headlines. it is easy to see. how do we get to a credible presence? how'd we change the answer to that simple question to something like, "i tell my children that if they are in trouble and they ever need help to go to a police officer and everything will be ok?" how do we get there? the short answer, short but not simple, is that we need to create a well led police organization based on core values, honesty, public service, obedience to the law, and high standards. no law enforcement agency delivers quality every time, but quite a bit has been learned about how to get closer to that role, especially over the last 20 years or so.

the guide seeks to break down some of that knowledge into its component parts. everything from political style policing, job-based policing, merit-based promotions, core values, criminal investigations. it combines that knowledge with some of the realities that the results, i think, combine some conventional wisdom, things that probably would not surprise anybody in this room. but also some reshaped ideas, some new ideas, and some questions, and hopefully some potential answers. i would just run for a few examples. first, the guide supports application of a pretty simple framework to fight crime. prevention, intervention, and

enforcement. multidisciplinary approach, absolutely. the police are not going to do this by themselves. second is the idea that training is just a tool, just one piece of the long sequence of events and actions that have to take place. it is a means to an end. whether you are talking about well-run police agency or good development program, it is not a goal in and of itself. third, the importance of focusing on the development of effective police agency core competencies. talk about staff functions, back-office functions, however you want to phrase it, things like leadership, management, policy, budget, personnel, structure, all these things that are hard to measure in many ways are absolutely mission critical to the job we have all signed up to do.

why is that? that is because if you peel back the layers, if you dig down into all the serious dysfunctions that we observe in a lot of places, use of force, excessive use of force, corruption, poor criminal investigations, in effectiveness in the police organization in general, you will come down to those core competencies that are dysfunctional. that seems to be a real key. fourth, focus on -- relentless focus on the value of leadership within the police organizations we are trying to assist, and parallel to that, change management. bringing those two things together in a way that will lead to a path to reform. reform that is not driven by us, not driven by outsiders, reform

that is driven by the people inside these organizations that we are trying to help. as david indicated, we have gone to the u.s. to part of justice. there i found the same dedication and perseverance -- in, by the way -- and those trades were repeated -- those traits were repeated. i want to recognize them. thanks very much. i am hopeful that it died will serve the u.s.a. and others will find it viable. i would encourage all the people in this room and the people we work with to raise our expectations, to strive to meet a higher standard of performance. recent history shows that we

have to bring all our skills to bear, and how much depends on our ability to do that. thank you. >> good morning. i would like to start off by thinking mop and usip for putting on this important event, and my fellow panelists -- banking and bob and usip, and for giving me the opportunity to speak on a subject that is near and dear to me and my fellow panelist at -- as well. the innovative approaches are taking us a strike to actuate meaningful please development

and reform. i am the deputy director of the office of criminal justice assistance and partnership in the bureau for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. inl is a large organization dedicated to different aspects of supporting anti-crime and counter narcotics activities abroad, using a variety of methods. today i would like to give you a brief overview of who we are and what we do and talk about some of the innovative approaches we are taking in foreign police development, which we are also mirroring in that corrections and justice sectors, such as directly bordering with state and local agencies to access the most current expertise available in all aspects of law enforcement. within the state department, inl is the lead on law

enforcement issues. these are priorities of critical interest to our own national security and foreign policy objectives. in every region of the world, emerging and maturing democracies recognize that save and secure communities are prerequisites to peace and prosperity. the bureau manages approximately $4 million in u.s. foreign resources. we operate in over 70 countries and employ roughly 70,000 people. we work and of conflict and pose conflict countries, but regardless of where rework, or overarching goal is to build our part as capacity to control progress within their own borders and to deny safe-haven to transnational criminals and organizations. work cooperatively with the host nation's criminal-justice agencies which are the

recipients of our assistance. while there are broad similarities from country to country, each location for work presents its own conditions and challenges. as a result, all our programs can have similar objectives, each has to be tailor-made. the majority of our programs are implemented through bilateral partnerships with our host nation partners and still more are realized in working through multilateral organizations such as the united nations. inl supports un and other peacekeeping operations around the world. haiti, southern sudan, and liberia are included. throughout all our efforts, we seek to achieve long-term sustainable changes. our programs are designed to address needs with our partners and focus on developing institutions. we have learned that one of

training simply will not have a long-term impact. training needs to be coupled with policies, procedures, the legal frameworks that are needed to provide the proper foundation and all of the other important points that john mentioned that go into the actual development of a police organization. programs seek to identify and cultivate leadership within organizations who will assist in managing difficult change and help them to find and implement their organizations' role in often tenuous security and development environments. in all this work, we rely on a multitude of partners and we continue to seek to broaden our base with and work. the international criminal investigative training assistance program within the the part of justice is one of our partners. as our other components, i know

will work closely with usaid. we have the privilege are reviewing an early draft of johns excellent field guide present here today. i would like to highlight some of the new steps we have taken to enhance our ability to deliver high-quality programming that truly leverage is a wide range of talent, skill, and resources. unl has increased our own in- house technical expertise in the area of police, justice, and corrections. it facilitates integrated programming across the criminal- justice sector, enhances our ability to respond to new and emerging requirements and a timely manner, and improves country into a program designed and monitoring and a violation capability. to augment our in-house team, we have reached out to tap the unique skill sets of active officers as advisers, trainers,

and mentors. the u.s. does not maintain a national police service. u.s. law enforcement expertise is spread across the country in various departments. inl has agreements and working relationships with corrections and police departments in new york, chicago, new mexico, nebraska, colorado, california, maryland, and texas, to name a few, that allow us to utilize current expertise with minimal burden on the contributing agency. these partnerships allow us to leverage the best these agencies have to offer with the particular needs of the host nation government. we are also working closely with law enforcement organizations whose reach extends beyond individual police departments. through these partnerships, police departments can contact and firsthand knowledge from direct involvement with their counterparts in countries of interest to their own work at home.

let me give up examples of the work we are undertaking in this regard. the chicago police department and the harris county sheriff's department have and -- have been instrumental in providing spanish-speaking personnel who have trained a new cadre of mexican as investigators. nypd provided it real speaking haitian american officers to participate in our policemen during a training program in haiti. the los angeles shares to berman has been supportive of our program development in thailand and cambodia. the international association of chiefs of police is partnering with approximately 15 u.s. law enforcement are his actions to provide training and mentoring in the u.s. for iraqi police officers. in the area of corrections, we

recently concluded a training in colorado for honduran prison staff on the classification of prisoners. earlier this year we worked with the state of maryland to host probation officers from the republic of georgia on probation best practices and procedures. our involvement does not end there. we work with the host country to both track and follow-up on that training with in country support when they return home. we are acutely aware that it is difficult or agencies who are strapped for personnel to allow professionals to be gone for long periods of time. we have worked closely with agencies to accommodate that, where people are gone from 30 days to 90 days or longer, depending on the agency's ability. active-duty officers are then fully integrated into inl programs in country.

the secretary of state is very committed to increasing the number of women law enforcement professionals in our overseas missions. including women and the full spectrum of policing as practitioners, implement a programs, and recipients of assistance is critical to our own success. our efforts to respond to the need to mentor are female counterparts is increasing. we are actively seeking female officers to partner with us in this important endeavour crew reaching out through female law enforcement organizations in the united states. we have learned many bible lessons in how to conduct police development over many years of experience. to access those lessons and to put them to work, inl is developing programmatic guides

to incorporate the good practices that have been innovated across our own force. we are drawing on the work that has been and is being done by our colleagues. we are undertaking a new look at the training we provide to our own advisers to deploy overseas to ensure they are receiving the best training we can provide for their efforts in the field. the confluence of these initiatives is working to enhance overall efforts in the area of police development. thank you. >> let me add my thanks to everyone who helped set that -- set up this important panel and to the participants.

john, maybe you and i worked together in haiti. i was part of the invasion in 1994. i had responsibility for the northern part. you had probably just as bad food as we had. i am not a military policeman. i am and infantrymen, paratrooper, ranger, and i came to police work quite by accident. i was in haiti. the first night i was there, the marines i was to relieve had a fire fight and killed 11 police and army got. the marines left the next day. i found myself responsible for providing police to the second

largest city in haiti. two days later, a division commander called me up and said jim, restart the police force. think we are don't ready yet. he said just go find two guys that were not that bad and put them back on the streets. it was a complete disaster. the disaster that luckily led to meet my wife, who was not in haiti at the time, but that is a different story. from then, i went on to a little less involvement with the special police in bosnia in the mission support unit. in iraq, i was responsible for training the police and military forces during the search of 2007 and 2008 and accelerating their growth, not just in size but in confidence and competence as

well. since 2008 have been an adviser in afghanistan for the same project what general mcchrystal, petraeus, and caldwell. that is how i got involved in the police business. i found the same position that john described. i had no guide to this. the first died i read was after i had all these responsibilities and i read bob's book. i said i wish i had had this before i started any of these things. i think it will be many similarities in what i say and in the fourth report that i wrote since i retired. they are all available on the web at the institute for the study of war. the sequence i was talking about was that war should lead

to peace, not the other way around. the description of the activities that we conducted to accelerate their growth. second, the accelerating combat power in afghanistan, not the classified version of a report that i gave to general mcchrystal and petraeus. the third, creating a police force of law enforcement systems, and the last, which has a portion about police forces in iraq beyond 2011. these are all available to you if your interested on the web. where to start? trying to summarize, as every case is so different, every country is different, every set of situations is different. i tried to gather of my experiences in fort myths and

one principle. the four myths i think are still very much alive. i hear them wherever i go. sometimes they are more or less prevalent, but as we get ready to face post-gaddafi regime, i bet all the myths are alive and well somewhere in the bowels of whoever is planning for post- gaddafi libya. training some number of police and providing some equipment will quickly produce a capable security force. this is crazy. there is no way that you can set a number and say we won x number of police forces and when you get there, check the block and you can leave. that rest on the misunderstanding that a spear has a point and a shaft, and if you just focus on the point, you cannot throw it anywhere. if you try to throw it, it will just fall to the fore.

there is no sustainability in building just the police force itself. that is the face of an enterprise. the enterprise, the shaft of the spear, includes all the support systems that our two previous speakers have already mentioned. training itself is only one, only a means to an end, not the end in itself. without addressing the entire enterprise, from national through provincial or county or state or whatever you are dealing with, to the individual station of policeman, without seeing how all that is connected and putting in the connective tissues, the headquarters, the processes, the interfacing systems of continued professional lusatian and training and logistic support, all the items that make up the back end of police work that you do not see when you walk down

the street, you do not build that shaft, you are wasting money. in a good many experiences, you are wasting lives, and certainly wasting a lot of time. we saw this in iraq for a good number of years. we saw this in afghanistan for a good number of years. this approach, identifying a number, is simply not true. it is a myth, in my view. doing the job like we are describing becks for organizational and directional demands. organizational demands, if you approach the problem with just training, then you will produce a headquarters that trains and trains alone, or identifying an organization that trains and trains alone. training is a means and not an end. the set of activities, leader

selection, leader development, will linkage to the penal system, the judicial system, and the set of other activities that are described in john's field guide as well as what i have written and many others, the headquarters for an organization or a set of organizations with some cohesion is required to make sure that not just the tip of the spear but the shaft, for the duration required, can do the job, and to define a problem and identify an organization to do the training and think you are done is again to fall to the myth of the tip of the spear. the second myth is the choice is between quality or quantity. either you train a bunch of guys and women to be policemen very

quickly and throw them out on the street, or you dedicate yourself to do and what is right. i am also a philosopher. this is a false dilemma. in cases like those which i have been associated with, if you just train a bunch of guys and put them on the street, you are going to do it over and over again. merely identifying quantity is really foolish. we did this again in iraq and afghanistan. how many numbers of policemen do you have to train to realize it is not just about numbers? i do not know the answer to that question. on the other hand, quality. there is no doubt in my mind that the best thing i could have

done in terms of the highest quality while i had this responsibility in iraq was to take individuals, put them through a very long training and education program, make sure they all had at least a high- school education to begin with, then put them on the street with a mentor for another year of apprenticeships and then make them a police officer. had i done that in 2007, we would have lost a war and then in a much worse position. so the issue for a person like me is, what is sufficient? what is good enough for now, and second, how the white embedded into the system and iterative understanding of quality so that next year, the police force is a little better predict how do i embed into the system and iterative understanding of quality.

the army we have now did not grow whole cloth in 1976. we had to take a number of steps over a number of years. this tells me that quality is an iterative characteristic, not an absolute characteristic. what is sufficient between quantity and quality? what is sufficient right now, and how do i bill been iterative quality systems? the third myth is related to the first one. once the training and equipping is done, then you can transition to civilian control and go home. again, this is a myth that is based on a mistaken analogy that training police is like a bass fishing tournament. you catch, measure, and release. you do not recruit, train, and

release. the partnership program that follows training a policeman is very much a continued mentor ship program. it is part of the continual training. this transition is a gradual transition, and probably is the case that at the individual policeman level, you may transition earlier than you can at the state or provincial level then you can at the national level. the farther away you get from the tip of this year, the more mr. shipp and mccrary and partnership is required, because the changing habits of behavior at the national level takes a heck of a lot longer. chaining we do changing habits at the state provincial level takes a lot longer. connecting those together takes a lot longer. so this transition business is not about training a set of numbers.

it is so dominant i think it is worth talking about as a separate myth. the last miss, and then we will talk about one principal at the end that should govern, but still has insufficient leverage here. the last minute, you can approach police training like you do military training. i m a military trainer. i do very well as a military trainer. if you want ever gave it trained, give it to me. not a problem. police are different. it is the difference between imposing security, which buys like me can do very well. when i showed up and there were 7000 guys with guns, there was really no problem. military forces to impose security very well, but that is not enforcing security. that is not enforcing what

already should exist as a communal agreement about how we should reject about how police should do that. there is no police force in the world that can impose security on a city that has no agreement. that is why you call up the national guard and federalized the army. imposing and forcing security are two different things. military guys do the first, police do the second. how you approach the second very much is different how you approach the first. police forces need a set of conditions to exist. you don't need conditions to exist to impose security. with police, this is a different deal. a certain set of conditions have

to exist before you can really start training the police in the right way. if the conditions are that policemen are afraid for their lives or they are afraid because their families are intimidated, or they are paid so little that they must pray of the society they are supposed to protect, or they have no set of systems that support them, so they steal and rock to get whatever they need -- these conditions have to be gone, and in some situations retired -- requires imposing a set of conditions before you can start working on a set of conditions for a police force. the one principle, said the conditions from the start to achieve unity of effort and coherence the of action.

notice i did not say unity of command. you would expect an army got to say that. but the number of agencies, the variety of agencies required by their nature to associate with police and law enforcement systems, the justice system, the confinement system, the education system, you are going to include the state, justice, usaid, and in certain cases preconditions of security have to be imposed first, you must have the department of defense. but the unity of effort among these departments is absolutely essential. otherwise, you have people detracted from the goal that we all have rather than concentrating. you do not have cohesion of action. you have diffraction of action. you have a cacophony rather than a chorus. pick whatever analogy you want.

after 10 years of war, we still see the difficulty in achieving this unity of effort incoherency of action. notice the principal is put one agency in charge. maybe that is right or not. the real into the -- answer is how you get unity of purpose, unity of effort, and coherence of action among the agencies who are going to be part of this enterprise? those are my four masks and my myths ncipal -- my four and my one principle and i look forward to the rest of the conversation. >> given that it is baseball season, i will use a few

analogies here in the spirit of baseball. since i am batting last in the lineup, i thought i would like an things up a little bit by using our point and there will be a little bit of a video embedded, and also to give you a little bit of exercise, as if you are watching baseball, you have to keep turning this way. i will be be some exercise at this late morning time. i also want to express my sadness that the nationals loss to the cubs last night. i will close with a baseball analogy. thank you, bob. i am pleased to be here with so many colleagues and friends that are here in the room as well as on the panel. i worked with many of you over the years and i want to thank everyone for their commitment to building and strengthening the rule of law in various posts

conflict in burman's. as bob mentioned earlier, i direct rule of law center here at the institute. when i first ordered to do this type of work, i was dropped into an environment completely unprepared. i was a federal prosecutor at the time in 1998 and i was dropped into bosnia to help rebuild their justice system. first i had to figure out where bosnia was on the map and i figured out as much as i could on the plane ride with a binder that was handed to me when i was getting on the airplane. that was very consistent at that time. i would like to think we are all better prepared, and with field guides and reports and things that are prepared, i like to hope that we are all learning and growing and doing a better job. like everything, there is always room for improvement. my comments now are formed

obviously by my field experiences over the past 13 years in different countries. that is the context in which i will place my comments. we all know that just because a conflict officially ends, whether through peace agreement or it may be a stability operation in place, we know that does not mean all is well. we know that violence continues. we know this can be residual violence. this could be splinter group is from an original insurgent group, or it could be newly formed groups. there could be political or religious or ethnic based violence. we also know because of the security gap that is very common in post conflict in burmans, certain factions prosper in that gap. we know that criminal organizations and cross war criminals thrive and violence and crime will often increase because of that gap. to address these challenges, we

often turn to promoting justice and security sector reform. we also look to do that in a very comprehensive way. we look across the entire justice and security sector and we look at an institution might approach, and we are looking at interventions that could tell many different things. you can never just of that training and equipping, but also restructuring institutions, establishing oversight and accountability mechanisms, and i could go on and on. that is in an ideal world. but there are a number of challenges to this comprehensive, top-down, holistic, integrated approach. one is obviously it takes time. when i say time, i mean a lot of time. not that your budget that we used to get and then start all over.

not even a five-year budget is that you rarely see. i am talking decades. i would even say generations. there was a world bank study that there are many multiples of decades for real change to occur in society. it takes a lot of time to build it. not just the technical kinks. we talk about human connections and the way relationships -- not just the technical connections. it is extremely difficult to get an agreed upon strategy. why is that? everyone has a different vision. some are self-interest it. some look at it according to their own view. you have this difficulty bringing together various justice and security agencies to agree, various political actors to agree, especially after

conflict because the things that drove the conflict do not vanish. when you are working in countries like afghanistan, it is not just the formal sector actors you were working with the customary, tribal, informal systems. we call it legal pluralism operating in one country, and trying to get everyone on the same page is obviously a challenge. many justice and securities sector interventions are many times lot and not as effective as they should be. that is because many times we based our information on incomplete understanding of really what is happening on the ground. what is the reality on the ground and the multiple reality, not just of the capital, but of different areas, especially in a pose conflict in burma where divisions are based on ethnic,

geographical, regional. the things that often fuel the conflict are still there. we do not have a unified country we are working with. oftentimes the reforms consult a very few people and we are not conducting an adequate consultation the broad spectrum of people before trying to create a strategy. we see reform decisions made by small group of people to the exclusion of a broader set of stakeholders. often these processes happen in the closed doors and there is a lack of transparency and people feel shut out. as a consequence, we witness a shortage of the successes we want to see. when that happens, you have in security, instability, and violence prevails. what do we do?

we do not give up like some of us do at times. in our darkest moments you want to give up and become a gardener and grow organic vegetables. the answer is not to give up but to change how we do it. we need to find ways to be smarter about how we do the work we do, how we spend our money and use our resources and our human capital. what we really need to look at is to have an operational analysis before hand. we need to find ways to work at the local level, to get deep end and wide across the country, to get a pulse of what is going on. i used to say that i would go into country like bosnia and cause a boat and i did not

really understand what was going on. i would be on channel a , the people that spoke english, the things that would resonate with my system. then i went to afghanistan for the first time with a cultural anthropologist. when he was in meetings, i realized my channel a is not in existence. so many things were going on that i was not aware of because i was looking through a narrow ends with my experiences. it is getting into those other levels and trying to understand them. doing this at the same time that we are working out this broad based institutional level. what i am going to talk about now or tools that help us conduct an operational analysis, not just doing what we used to do which was just an assessment.

i have been part of those assessments. it is really to look at things in a deeper and broader way. the second tool is justice and security dialogue. both of these tools have been developed like everything, as a work in progress over the past four or five years, through of number of programs that we have engaged here in afghanistan, liberia, and sudan, and in nepal, which was particularly helpful, given its context. through our partnerships with u.s. aid and others, we were able to develop these tools. let me talk briefly about the justice dialogue and then you get to see the video that are promised.

jfc engages a big tent of stakeholders because ed brogan every society requires a patchwork of everybody being brought together, not just one sector, but all sectors coming together including the community government, society, all the people who need to buy into the system and have that social contract. the week before last, we published a case study or tried to walk through what it looks like. there is a reader's digest version on our web, but we tried to whatever step-by-step and paint a picture rather than just this still live in a few policy recommendations. it is not just talking and then

leaving. it is a vehicle or means to do things that are vital to strengthening the rule of law in pose conflict and garments. there are a number of different things that all have to be dependent upon the country's context and reality. it is never one size fits all. there are principles, but ultimately there are a few things are a number of things that can be done. this includes identifying gaps and challenges and adjustments to the security sector, developing innovations it solution and strategies that are driven by the people in the community and the police themselves, talking to the person on the street, talking to the villager, talking to all levels, getting deep and wide in the community and the police service and in all different sectors. resolving conflicts and problems as you are going along

for the process, because there is violence and challenges. trying to do dispute resolution through these dialogues and trying to create stability as a whole country, building trust between the police and civil society as well as the community, sharing information, and deepening lines of communication between the police, civil society, and community. jsd can have a number of direct impact, not just talking. in nepal, there have been a number of direct impacts discussed in the report. after a lot of youth related violence, you were frustrated and wanted things moving forward. members of the political parties were not acting. through dialogue at the request of police, the youths and police were brought together and came to an agreement. after that, the rate of violent

protests and violence plummeted in that district and that is still the case. also increased cooperation between the police and religious leaders. in nepal, the monks and the catholic church were being targeted and there was a bomb that went off. religious leaders worked with police on how to handle this, and that helped the situation from that targeted violence and improved police cooperation on a daily basis. i will now do the short clip.

[speaking foreign language]

>> if it would like to watch the full clip, it is on our website. the second tool is conducting a justice and security survey. ideally, these tools are integrated, because they both have the same goal. often, part of a survey can gain

information from the dialogue sessions, and at the same time, the findings of the survey can be fed into the the ballpark -- into the dialogue session. the justice and security survey in short is a goal to identify how things are operating in practice in the field. getting to every sector. we did this in nepal and that often meant surveyor's putting on backpacks and trekking into the hills for days at a time to areas that were inaccessible but areas of the strongholds where they started the insurgency. often it was the first time anyone had asked them what is their vision of justice and security. who do you go to when there are conflicts? just basic questions.

it was often the first time anyone had asked them that question. just the survey itself is a process by which to bring in people who often may be marginalized and not have a voice in the process. obviously it is useful information to help build reform efforts. in conclusion. to address instability and crime in oppose contra debarment is critical before engaging in any form of justice and security reform, that time is taken to truly listen and engage at all levels through mechanisms such as justice and security dialogue and a well crafted access to justice survey. a platform is needed for people to voice their grievances, provide meaningful input, and

participate in recommendations. we see a demand for justice, security, and accountability. these are defining features of rule of law. there is a call in the streets for having a voice in the process of reform and change that affects every person's life at all levels. we would do well in all of our efforts to heed that call and ensure that police assistance programs reflect these voices. >> thank you, colette. i want to thank david for his kind remarks and all the members of the panel for an exceptionally informative and interesting presentation. i now want to open the floor. we will do this in the following way.

i would like to ask those of you that want to ask questions to move to the microphone that is on this side of the room. for those of you that are watching in overflow rooms here at the institute, you are invited to put your questions on cards and we will collect those and bring them in and ask the questions accordingly. i want to exercise the prerogative of the chair and ask my own question. we have heard a lot about the nature of our training programs, but the question remains, who does this training? if you look across this wide variety of training programs that the u.s. government presents, the train itself is actually provided by very different kinds of people. some of the by federal and local police, some of it by a new category, by contractors that

work for a number of commercial firms, military police officers, and by ordinary u.s. soldiers. my question is, since we have all these people doing training, does the united states really need to develop a proficient -- professional police training court? -- police training corp? let's start with john and we will run down the panel. >> thanks for that easy question. i love the softballs. whether we can do it, i don't think is a question. i think there are some pretty strong arguments in favor of doing something like that.

the management side of me says how would we attain that capability when there is a surge requirement up and down? there could be some pretty significant management concerns, and i think to some extent we tried to address that with the civilian response corp concept that many of you are familiar with. there is a lot of president talent that could be maintained at a pretty significant level. our ability to deploy that talent might have to be improved a bit, but i think it is certainly something we could do. whether or not we decide as the u.s. government, including all the particular elements of that, whether it is worth the investment. >> i think it is an interesting

question and i would have some of the same questions that john raised about how big it would have to be, and i've thought of some of their civilian response corps and how some of those people are already involved and are receiving a standard of training across crc to bring some of that. some of what you are getting at is, are we approaching it in a similar way? i think that is an important question. one of the things we are trying to do in that regard is to look at all the training we are giving to all of our fighters, and we are doing that in partnership with looking at the training we are giving to our 3161 employees as well to make

sure everyone has a core foundation of knowledge on how to actually take the technical skills that you have from your professional life and apply those in this new environment. >> ideally, i think the short answer is yes. each country is a little different and has separate requirements. the practicality is simply not possible to have a standing core of people and have a standing core approach that can be used prior to deployment. the answer to that can and should be yes. >> i would just echo what john said. ultimately, many of us have been engaged with this for over a decade. practically speaking, it is just not possible.

the better effort is placed at trying to identify the principals and needs. you are sharing it among the different organizations that are training. i have seen actual movement in that direction. it just obviously needs to be more and encouraged more fully. >> thanks very much. we can now move to questions. i want to do is in the following way. i would like to ask for two questions, and then we will ask for the panel to respond. i would like her questioners to identify themselves by name and affiliation -- i would like the questioners to identify themselves by name and affiliation. >> [unintelligible] my question follows on several

comments that were made by the panel. it has to do with capability. it is not just a question of quality, but a question of what the country can afford. how many police were retraining in afghanistan -- were we training in afghanistan, and what is the cost per month? how do you sustain it in the long run when you have created a quality board and the country cannot afford to pay for it? [unintelligible]

i appreciate the general bringing up the issue of the unity of effort of various agencies working in this area. i would like to explore that a little further. should there be a lead agency? the current model, should that be followed or should there be a new approach? >> those are two very good questions.

we will start with colette this time and go the other way. >> it is interesting because connecting the ship's sustainability the whole system of justice, the focus has to be the starting point. sometimes what it is costly, time-consuming, and it may remain not work. a lot of us are promoting an approach where we are really researching a looking what is there and building upon what is there. it may not look like something we would want initially, but you're trying to build steps. you cannot go from a to z

overnight for 10 cents when it would cost $100,000. >> sustainability is a big deal. afghanistan is more of a deal than iraq. they have more money in 2008 them $11 billion of their own money. afghanistan is a different case. the conundrum there, at least in my view, is that you set a cap on the number of security forces that afghanistan can afford, then you set a goal but we will be there forever or we leave. then we let the country descend into whatever it will descend into. how you manage what is sustainable now becomes an issue of concern beating nations over time and building a force

that has that aspect of sustainability. afghanistan will never be able to fund the the police they need to secure themselves, at least in the near term. that is the biggest one, not the only one. this is a huge, huge problem, a commander in the truest sense. -- a conundrum. the comments about building on what is there is really important, especially in the criminal-justice system and go i think your term was building multiple legal systems acknowledging that is a legitimate model build upon instead of trying to impose one is part of the difficulty when we come into a country. we can do much better at that. sustainability, that is another

tough one. >> michele? >> the issue of sustainability is a very interesting one, and i think it different -- it differs in which plays to our operating in. there are some places where, clearly what ends at being created will not be affordable and that is clearly not sustainable. sometimes cut there are situations, and this gets back to the general points about iterations of quality and that there may be different points in, for instance, in a post- conflict environment where you need something understanding that it is an interim solution and that over time, as the situation stabilizes and that is part of the planning that the

numbers can be reduced to numbers that are sustainable. >> on sustainability, i think the dialogue kind of approach helps in a couple of ways. first, there's someone famous, and i can remember the name, mrs. began with the end in mind. so what we have some sense of what the country can afford, that should probably be early on in the conversation with the community, citizens, with the ministry level people with the idea that we will not be here forever and we cannot help them pay for their own security forever. secondly, i mentioned earlier the focus on leadership. some of the things that we really need to have come in my opinion, to make the countries we're trying to help more

successful do not cost a whole lot. attitude is cheap, for example. a police officer's attitude is a critical piece of their service delivery and of their relationship ability. i think there are some pieces of this that dunois really require a lot of long-term investment. certainly, you have to pay people a living wage, but i think that there are things that are not necessarily having big dollars attached to them that can be really important. the second question about the agency approach and that sort of thing, certainly come i'm not in a position to know when or if that may ever happen. i do believe though, and i've have seen it happen, but people

can set aside their agency had and put on their mission had, and it is pretty amazing to see what can happen when that takes place. >> thank you. ok. i would like to take one question here and then some questions from the other rooms here watching this program on television. >> i am with the friends committee on national legislation. my question is specifically for michelle, but i welcome other panelists to answer. this is regarding your statement about the current work in conflict and post-conflict countries. i'm curious about the work you're doing in countries that are not currently experiencing conflict but may down the line. health and prevention should now be a core civilian mission of the state department. how did they plan to realign themselves with that priority

and how is it -- how do you see your work shifting in the future? >> we have a number of questions submitted and they all deal with the issue of corruption. it is a major factor in all of these assistance programs, so i will ask all the members of the panel to comment on the issue of how to deal with police corruption. how'd you do this in the context of a police assistance program, and how you do so in a sustainable way? i will let mishal respond first and then we will ask all the panelists to respond to the question about corruption. michelle? >> thank you for the question about qddr. that is a core theme in the document in there are so many aspects of what the development

agencies, the state department, and the departments of defense do that relate conflict prevention. and in some ways, a conflict prevention is about shifting the lens of how you think about the work that you're doing. in terms of actual implementation, that is an ongoing process that of the state department is involved in right now. i can really go ahead and comment on the particulars that we are doing, but we have long seen, especially in post- conflict worker, taking certain types of activities and recidivism to try and prevent recidivism in conflicts that were not previously involved in security force training and that

type of work. >> let's get a response on the question of how you deal with police corruption? and john, you have a lot of experience with that. >> i'm not sure how to take that, bob. [laughter] certainly, police corruption is -- thanks. that is reassuring. trying to start at the beginning, there are values systems in the organization, and that sounds like a cop out, but leadership has embarked -- has a responsibility to make them real. and we know of some high-profile failures. what does that really mean? i think it really means of practical things that can be

employed. for example, there are political implications, but a contract to has seen the leadership of law enforcement organizations, it helps insulate them a little bit from the political factors that may cause them to make bad decisions. it gives them some time to build an organization based on good values. that is even being done in one country, i believe in jamaica, at the lower levels of the organization so that every few years, as a police officer, your contract is up, and you go through a review process, like a new polygraph, for example, to make sure that you are still upholding the values of the organization. i will try to keep this short, but there are a series of things that i think are good idea. the initial training has to do

with the inoculation, if you will come against corruption, but there needs to be booster shots along the way, perhaps the internal processes, which goes back to the core competencies i spoke of, audits, inspections, all things necessary to remind people what their job is and is not. i think there are people -- i think there are strategic things that can be done and some much more practical, gramm level things. it is two steps forward and one step back, but if we keep our eye on the ball, we can meet these priorities. >> does anyone else want to take that question? >> to me, it is not a question of what when it and there'll be corruption, but anytime you have a group of human beings together, some of them will be corrupt. the issue then becomes what you

do to face the corruption and how you reduce the conditions that either encourage it or discourage attacks corruption itself as a complex issue. there are a bunch of different kinds of corruption. some are more nefarious than others, some more difficult than others. the reasons for corruption that range for a variety of reasons, but on the practical side, at least how i approach this, there is external pressure. we have laws that prevent us from using our money to give to organizations of certain types. or who exhibit certain behavior is. withholding that funding is a type of pressure. second, leadership. john mentioned this. the national police in iraq in 2007 is an example. the jones commission report came out and said that the national

police should be disbanded because there are part of the sectarian violence that contributed. this was a hugely beneficial statement. then the minister took this to heart. we told the minister he had no choice. and we could not supported and must have reforms. he chose a new commanding general of the police who fired all nine brigade commanders and 17 m 20 brigade commanders. he read fired some number of them and the process is ongoing. it is a statement of leadership that we will change. training and continued professional development is also a very big part, but the transparent system is part of the deterrent of transparency.

the system of pay, promotions, leader selection, equipment delivery. these systems, in many countries, are anything but transparent and are a part of the corrections system. as you work on preparing the institution and its processes, you start narrowing the opportunities for corruption. last are the internal affairs. a very gruesome statistics. the internal affairs director at 12 assassination attempts on his life in the 15 months i was in iraq. this is a very aggressive director of internal affairs. now, that is not something we would like to hold up as a standard of so many attempts on your life, but it gives you an indication of the attempts that were being made to eliminate corruption and where you have an institution that has no such attempts in a situation like

iraq, afghanistan and others also tells you something >> i would just up in echo. in many countries where we're working with police, everyone says to get rid of the police because that is a very public demonstration of corruption that you seem, but this goes all the way back into the tentacles of society as a whole. it was happening in the police, but officers were exerting force. you have to pay certain people and then the businesses were shaking down businesses and the minister above was shaking down the transportation minister who shut down the tracks -- the taxi drivers. in that kind of situation, all

the things of the general mentioned as far as oversight, exerting pressure, but another thing is to work within communities to get this out. it is an interesting dynamic. there was one dialogue when they were pointing fingers to the civil society or complaining they were corrupt. and they're making victims paid file complaints a you could have more complaints and get more donor money. all these things were going on about how people were impacting and were part of the correction process. it is a fact of life and finding creative ways to attack it that is allowing it to be more conducive and putting pressure on it. >> i would like to invite two questions. once again, if you can stay your name and affiliation. thank you. >> good morning. i'm a foreign service officer with usaid and now in the office

of military affairs. i was taken by the comments about wasting time, money, and potentially lives. my observation is that we as a government, we have a "can-do" attitude. we go overseas with that attitude. what advice do you have when it is really a lack of political will to the fundamental reforms that are necessary. we recommend we are not in the driver's seat. the local leadership is in the driver's seat. i had lots of problems with the program in peru, for example, which has now not gone very far because the right approach is we try to put in place, they did not stick. if there is a "no can do a" environment and we have a "can- do" approach, what do we do as a

government? and we exit? is there actually alternative? >> that is a very realistic question. afterwards i will tell you about a few situations we were involved in. please, go ahead. >> i am part of the civilian response corps and and had the privilege of working with john last year and am now working here. putting the police in a larger context, the assistance program in a larger context, there is a lot of attention paid to the police said a lot of resources given to the police, particularly in the post- conflict transition, but what do you see from your experiences from other elements, economic growth, transitional justice, and those sorts of elements. how can the assistance given to

the police also helped to amplify the effects of programming and other areas? >> general? >> i will start with the second question of. i will use the surge in iraq as kind of an example. when most of us think about the surge, we think the additional number of troops and the counteroffensive that facilitated. that, in my view, was one of the five that occurred between 2007-2008. it goes to the question about linkages to other elements of national power and it goes to an understanding of security in a broader sense. search number one was the counteroffensive that was facilitated by the increase in

conventional forces and special operations forces. number two was the increase at provincial levels in the government's capability of the province's ability and their counselors by the extraordinary leap in numbers and proficiency of the reconstructive teams. this had a huge benefit in didn't -- in the counteroffensive. once it was over, and they started doing immediate work with the provincial government and counsel. third was a diplomatic surge that was internal to iraq and the region. ambassador cropper and a short and very talented had on this team had a very aggressive engagement program with the prime minister, the prime minister's major deputies, with other parties not in power in iraq and with key leaders in the

parliament. the economic surge, by the end of 2007 or 2008, the real system was reestablished. the communications system was set free-war levels and that oil production was a pre-were lovell's and growing. the bridge and road network was in. there was the infrastructure for economic development that was put in place. in these sets of surges working together to improve the sense of security. i think that demonstrates the prospective on government, national power and growing together. each one it did develop and is still developing at different rates. this is not a world war ii type

of situation where the front line moves forward in unison. a justice system takes longer to develop than a training system. the development of physical infrastructure takes a shorter time than the development of governance capabilities. we seem to think that we can move along with milestones that move everyone and it just does not reflect the reality of of the security situation >> other members? >> i wanted to comment on the same question in terms of amplifying the facts. i very much agree these resources, sometimes when they are put in one place at the same time in a coordinated way can really have quite an impact. some of my colleagues here have worked on some of these things a

the same time i was working on them and in particular i am digging of the haiti stabilization initiative that we worked on word was a collaboration between the state department, usaid, and with the u.n. and in terms of trying to bring some stability and development to a very troubled part of port-au-prince to look at where security was deployed and development resources really had an impact. i think those things working together can do it. >> anyone else? >> i have a comment briefly on the "can-do" approach and working in a note can do environment. trees certain extent, when you're working with the justice

and security sector, you're dealing with people who do not want to change, or if they do want to change, it is difficult. they do not want to move forward. that is a reality. from my perspective, when i look at it from programming situations, i am such a firm believer of setting the landscape and achieving all but as possible. things do not move at the same rate. with the drought would is needed and come up with a strategy. it would all work out because everyone would work together and the strands would catch up. that is not reality. from a problematic standpoint, you figure or you can move. it is like an amoeba. why would we waste millions of dollars pouring that intra program were not go? the entry may be small and it

may cost $10,000. it may just be a conversation. whenever it is is planting a seed. when i was a prosecutor, i had the night vision that i could solve all the fraud against the elderly. i was young. it then hit me that it would not happen, but what i could do was to work with an fbi agent on getting a really good search warrant. it is planting the seeds and knowing they can grow. in the way we envision this, we have to make it happen and just want. >> two questions over their backs >> -- over there? >> yes, the government puts a lot of effort, time, and funding to ensure security globally. the private sector is a

multiplier of the effort the u.s. government does to insure security globally. how can they be involved in a way that creates a win-win situation for the newly trained police force and also a.m. when a situation where the u.s. companies but are looking for opportunities in the global market? in working with agencies like usaid, sometimes it is very complicated, longwinded, and i was wondering if you could share may be some process that might make it easier. >> we will give that to michelle. i would just want to put in a question from another room that came in.

is a general question about the fact that we're not out there alone and there are a lot of other countries involved. not only are we coordinating interagency when we are involved, but also across various countries. i will leave that question with the panel and we will take one more question and we have about five minutes left. we will ask the panel to wrap up in this next five minutes. welcome. nice to see you. >> i am with the litigation of this. john, congratulations to you and your team. this is the kind of work and desk reference that can really make a difference of the field level. my question is on the theme that mishal talked about. the panelists really talked about the tremendous challenges that this endeavor takes in terms of leadership, the fight against corruption, funding

capacities, deficits, and the question of political will. about one year ago, a book came out called "switch" and one of the things they recommended was to look for bright spots. i want to take advantage of the expertise of the panel if people could search their memories on what could be an example from your experience with the necessary ingredients to really create change on the ground, and go back to the example about where those ingredients came together to create meaningful change. >> john? >> i'm sorry. really quick, this kind of connects to the question about the private sector. i think there's some potential,

and i would suggest that maybe we could improve in this area to help create public momentum for change. we hope that democracy is beginning to function in a lot of these places. of course, one piece of that is when the public is concerned about something, hopefully there is some legitimate, effective response on behalf of government. in the private sector, more security, better law enforcement, better criminal- justice is in everyone's best interests includes those in the business community, and they often have a voice in what happens in their country. there are organizations, chambers of commerce, they cannot be effective in they can help to create some of that momentum for change. that is that particular

response. just one quick thing on the bright spots. i mentioned earlier something's going on in jamaica in internal affairs that i think have a lot of value. we mentioned contracts and there are some other pretty advanced kind of tactics and techniques going on to improve the integrity and reduce the corruption in that country. the second group, when i was at usa, and wheat have a program going on in el salvador. it has shown some value, i thank to the extent that prosecutors had asked to be a part of the project. there are some signs of life out there, if you will.

>> i will touch very briefly on the question of the private sector. there is a lot that the private sector can be involved in terms of capacity building and the services being delivered. another example that comes from haiti, we were doing a program to improve police discussion and we were installing -- yes. i do not remember the technical details, but what i remember that was really meaningful to me is that all the people who brought in to install the commitment and we kept on in terms of maintenance roll all locally hired people and technicians' part of the haitian

national police. there is knowledge transfer from the company came in to the locals. >> first, on the small things that make big changes, for the iraqi national police in october 2007, they had an immediate positive affected just by showing up. the iraqi national police wanted to be like those guys. but with unbelievable. the transformative effect -- it was unbelievable. it transformed a defect in combination with the leadership change was hugely and transform it into the iraqi national police, now the federal police. we are not alone. this is a multinational effort. in haiti, there were 13 nations

working in my brigade combat team. in iraq, a 11 general officers from different countries. that was not a nato training mission. leadership in these kinds of environments is a collaborative be affected. it is a huge boom, i believe, to have this diversity of perspective on the senior leadership team so that a person like me does not get locked into my experience alone, which may be extensive to some areas but limited in others. the multinational aspect is huge. last on the contract business, i would make two comments. first, if we could shift from the two-figure contract into a five-figure contract in --

contracting. we do that for them, they watch, then we do it together, and then they do it. it misses out on everything in between. we have to learn to write contracts that acknowledge all five fingers. the finesse in the contract. system, if it is not nonexistent, it is almost immeasurable. the reality of these situations is that facts on the ground shift very quickly, there for so did the requirements. contracts do not shift very quickly. you are stopped with the requirements written and you are in constant mismatch, therefore, not because of things that people have done bad and not because anyone is not good, they are all good, but if you write a

contract in 2005 that is activated in 2006 that cannot fluctuate to the situation in 2007, you are automatically in a situation where the ends and means do not match. i am not a contract and professional. i am very happy not to be a contract and professional. that is a challenge to this contract professionals that we do have. it is a problem. >> just a comment on little things that make a big difference. one takeaway i have from many different experiences is the quote attributed to margaret mead, a small group of people that come together and make a difference. sometimes it is just someone taking a step up and collecting with others that can be a model for others to follow. in one country, the police were

not interested in engaging and that came from the top of. someone saw a vision and stepped across the table to actually meet with some of the human rights defenders who had been throwing things at them and it was such a divide. he stepped across. the other divide was senior leadership and police. no one spoke except for that person. i knew there was a lot of important permission but we were not going to get it. in certain regions, the leader let the juniorho officers speak up of. once he did that, that was unbelievable. i would just say the bright spots oftentimes are people stepping up and being willing to make those connections.

>> thank you very much. i would like to thank our panel for a very informative discussion. [applause] i would like to thank the audience for really good questions. we recognize this is an audience full of friends, colleagues, and experts in this field. thank you for coming out on this warm summer morning here in washington. thank you, c-span, for being with us throughout the morning. i have a request from the security people. when you exit the room, if you would just go across the atrium and out the double doors, that is the fastest way out of the building. we have found this is a complicated building and people wonder four days. they were never seen again. down through the atrium and out

the double doors. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> betty ford died last night at the age of 93. president obama and former presidents have been remembering mrs. ford for her work on reducing the stigma of drug and alcohol addiction, which she battled. she became the founding inspiration for the betty ford

center. george w. bush remembers her contributions. she is a remarkable political spouse. in 1976, she delivered her husband's concession speech after he lost his voice and a presidential bid to carter. next come remarks from 1999 when she and president ford won the congressional gold medal. she was honored for her work on behalf of those addicted to alcohol and drugs. here is a portion of that ceremony. >> thank you, mr. president and to all of the wonderful people who are here, good afternoon. i feel as though my chest is bursting with all of this. i felt i was going to sprout wings and fly out of the top of

the rotunda. for me, it is so special to be here and see my husband honored on this occasion. it has been so full of gratitude and to share in this recognition is beyond anything i could possibly have imagined. mr. speaker, as you know, yours is the only job in this town that gerry really ever wanted. fate has a way of overtaking best laid plans. as a result, we lived in the white house for 2.5 years of the other end of pennsylvania avenue. believe me. i am not complaining about fate. this house, to me and gerald, the people's house, it will

always be our tour home. -- true home. for 25 years, and i have steve and susan here to absolutely verify this, but this majestic building was a friend to me and to our children. as they grew up, we spent countless hours in both the house and senate galleries listening to debate and absorbing the legislative workings of the representatives of the people. standing here now, i cannot help but remember that cold and blustery day on january 19th, 1977, when we took a leave of washington. following president carter's generous remarks and tribute to my husband, and all that he had done to heal our country, we found ourselves leaving the capital and walking past a row

after row of capitol police. for many years, they had been more than just friends to us. in a very real sense, they were like an extended family. as america came to know during that tragic event, they know -- not only protect, but they stand guard over democracy. today, i am glad to see some of them here as well as all of you who have enriched our lives beyond any measure that you can possibly know ago and to you, mr. president, for all of your remarks and all of you who honor us with your presence here. i thank you. this is one that we will

treasure and never forget. to all of those who have blessed us with your friendship over these years, it is wonderful to see you, and please accept our gratitude and love all the you have been, for all that you are to gerald, me, our children, and most importantly to our country. thank you very much . [applause] >> elizabeth and a ford died at

the age of 93. she will be buried alongside her husband in grand rapids, mich. sunday, democratic pollster andrew baumann talks about debt and deficit reduction. then bruce cook books at a proposal to cut federal spending until 2018. after that, vicki needham from 'the hill" on the trade agreement between u.s. and colombia. emails, phnone calls, and tweets live at 7:00 on c-span. >> this weekend on c-span3, on a

first encounters between native americans coming year pants, and africans in the new world. harvard professors on the role of african-american soldiers during the civil war. and recalling his childhood in an internment camp in ohio and the japanese-american experience. get the complete schedule at c- span.org/history. >> and next, a house subcommittee hearing on proposed changes to social security benefits. we will hear about how they can affect the program and future beneficiaries. the want to raise the retirement age and pay more in social security taxes. this is one hour, 25 minutes. >> good morning to all of you.

we want to get this meeting started at a time, so i bring this meeting to order. we heard a few weeks ago from the public trustees that unless congress acts in 200036 that social security revenues will only cover 77% -- unless congress acts by 2036, revenues will only cover 77%. current benefits should not change for those in or near retirement. all of our lives, they have played by the rules and they deserved peace of mind in knowing that social security will be there for them. young people deserve peace of mind, too. at our last hearing, we look at options to raise payroll taxes to address these challenges and we heard they do not provoke -- promote savings. with chronic unemployment,

falling in coming, and young people unable to find work, nothing we do should make harder for americans to find good paying jobs. today, we will learn more about social security benefits, proposed changes come and their impact on future beneficiaries, workers, social security, finances, and economic growth. since the beginning of the program, benefits have been based on workers' lifetime earnings. the formula that determines benefits is designed to replace a higher percentage of career earnings for low wage workers. benefits are increased every year to keep pace with inflation through cost-of-living adjustments. social security first paid monthly benefits in 1940 to a lady named ida may fuller. her first monthly check was $22.54.

during her lifetime she collected nearly $23,000 in benefits. today, 55 million americans receive benefits averaging over $1,000 per month. by 2035, 90 million will have received benefits. benefits are more generous, but the number of beneficiaries will rise more rapidly than the number of workers now struggling in today's economy will need to support them. the reality is that there are not enough young workers to support the baby boomers retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 19 years. social security also provides essential and come to workers' families, spouses, children, and survivors who are all eligible for benefits. one out of every 13 beneficiaries receives family

benefits. many of our witnesses will review how american social security has changed over the last 76 years. today, people are just living longer. that is nice, is it not? when social security was created, americans lived on average to 64 and the retirement age was 65. according to the actuaries, the full retirement age increase in life expectancy from the beginning instead of being 66, it would be close to 71. however, i know that the life- insurance guys will tell you you will live to be 100 nowadays. no wonder no members on both sides of the aisle have expressed support for raising the retirement age. in 1935, social security was born amidst a great economic crisis, the great depression. fdr said social security could furnish only a base upon which

each one of our citizens may build their individual securities drew their individual efforts. in other words, social security benefits were intended to provide a modest safety net. in the challenging economic times, fdr's statements ring true. everyone who pays in should receive a benefit, but not everyone relies on social security. whatever solutions congress may ultimately consider, we must protect those who deposit and depend on social security the most. in the meantime, until congress acts, workers and their families are challenged to plan for their retirement, an important tool is the social security statement which includes the earnings history and estimated future social security benefits. it is the main document they used to communicate with over 150 million workers and their future benefits.

i'm confident by working together that we can provide that certainty. i think our witnesses for joining us today and i look forward to hearing about ways we can move a forward and we are expecting votes aroudn 10:00 or 10:15, so we will try to work you all in. i would implore all of the members to commit to 5 minutes. you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. today's hearing illustrate the basic question of right and wrong. social security is never contributed a dime to the nation's $14.30 trillion debt, not one penny to the federal

deficit this year, or any year of our nation's history. yet some in this town insist we should cut social secure the benefits to pay for these deficits. these are deficits run up by the last 10 years principally as a consequence of paying for two wars and giving unpaid for tax cuts to millionaires. most americans would say it is immoral and american -- unamerican to tax peter to pay for paul's sins. how can this right? here is the simple truth. today, social security has over $2.60 trillion in its trust fund generated by worked contributions. over its lifetime, it has earned $14.60 trillion and has only spent $12 trillion. do the math. as a result, social security has enough income in results -- in

reserves to pay for the next 25 years. social security is not broken and it will not the bankrupt. unlike the federal operating budget, social security cannot deficit spending, nor will it ever face its own debt ceiling crisis. the challenges to address a manageable shortfall after 2036. the size of that shortfall is the same of the bush tax cuts for just the wealthiest 2% of american taxpayers. preserving social security for the future is a matter of priorities, right and wrong. what is wrong as cutting social security benefits for people who work hard all their lives to earn benefits for themselves and their families. it is wrong if you are cutting their social security in order to pay for tax cuts for millionaires. social security benefits are very modest and most seniors have limited incomes.

the average benefit for a retiree is $14,000 per year. six out of 10 seniors rely on social security for more than half of their income and nearly 33% have nothing else to count on. as people get older and out live their retirement savings, they rely on their social security paycheck. the benefits republicans have put on the table would have devastating consequences for today's seniors and the 155 million future beneficiaries who are paying into social security today. we learned from the chief actuary that under the privatisation bill, h.r. 219, introduced by pete sessions, social security would be "severely compromised." if we enacted the bill, current seniors might not get their

bill. in addition, the chairman of the house budget committee has a plan to privatize social security, raise the retirement age, and cut benefits for the middle class. house republicans voted to create a special fast-track process for social security cuts. it does not end there. they represent 75% of my colleagues on the republican side including majority leader eric cantor once to start benefit cuts in 2014 at a time when they will have $3 trillion in the social security trust fund. it would cut benefits for middle-income workers and could easily cost of about $3,400 per year. mr. chairman, i am grateful we are holding a hearing on social security benefits. we need a comprehensive discussion on all options available to strengthen social security. where you stand on social security and where you fall on the ways to strengthen it will

speak volumes about your priorities for our country and the generation that built the america we so loved. i look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. >> thank you. $3 trillion is a lot of money. you cannot pay benefits in bonds. social security needs cash. i do not know where treasury gets the cash to redeem the bonds. in times of the deficit, the treasury has to borrow what. today, the u.s. boras 40 cents for every $1 it spends, much of it from the chinese and it sends the bill to our children and grandchildren. >> may i comment on that? >> this is a piece of paper, like the treasury certificate, that social security has. it says $20 on it. it is worth $20 only if the full faith and credit of the government backs and up.

this is a treasury bond my daughter got when she was born 16 years ago. it is supposed to be worth $50 a cashes it in when she turns 18. it is a certificate based on the full faith and credit of the united states. it is worth money simply because we say we will have the full faith and credit of the united states to back up, but whether it is this or this, or the social security treasury certificate, or the ones that china or japan has, we will either live up to our obligations and our debts or we will not. to say that the treatment -- $3 trillion trust fund is real paper, but this is worth money come it is an egregious way to tell seniors they paid into its system and make them believe it is not there for them. my daughter relies on this $50

savings bond the way we will rely on social security. >> before we move on to testimony, i will remind the witnesses to keep their opening statements to 5 minutes. be advised that, without objection, your statements in writing will be written in the record. no objections. we have one panel today. our witnesses are seated at the table. an independent consultant from newmarket, md., sylvester schieber. tom terry from the american academy of actuaries. eugene steuerie. joan entmacher, and barbara

bovbjerg from the gao. thank you all for being here. >> good morning, mr. chairman. thank you very much for inviting me here today to this subcommittee. my remarks today will focus on they needed to modernize social security benefit portfolio to improve the effectiveness to meet one of the water specified goals, one of the ones you mentioned in your opening remarks, the redistributive character of the program. in the opening analysis of my submitted remarks, i show how the retirement system has gotten more costly overtime. the results the results and table one relative to today will have

borne peril taxes more than six times those of a worker retiring in 1955. in your opening remarks you mentioned miss fuller getting social security benefit. she did fairly well under the program. today, the bridges and are not doing quite as well. if you add in the supplemental costs, they are nearly triple what they were in 1955. workers are are exceeding one third of their lifetime paid just to cut -- just to cover retirement and health-care costs. and that is nothing to address retirement security and medicare.

we cannot simply address our financing issues by throwing more crossed out workers. some of our financing shortfalls can be addressed by making financial security -- social security modernize according to 21st century reality. in 1955, it was intended to provide relatively higher benefits compared to those with lower earnings. at least a dozen different times since 1935 congress has reaffirmed the commitment. table 2 of my formal submitted remarks shows what they feel vote systems money's worth is. it compares the value of the expected lifetimes social security benefits at age 65 to the accumulated by you of

payroll taxes on lifetime earnings. numbers in the table that are greater than one suggest some of the 1939 birth award will receive more of the lifetime benefits than the value of their contributions. if you look at the values for 100 couples, you can see that they do better on average than their sigel counterparts. were the single earner is a high earner, the system provides relatively high benefits for low earners better couples. it is an inconsistent results with the stated goal. in the third table i carry that through the supplemental

savings and a carriage to the whole system. it is essentially defeating the redistributive feature in the social security's benefit form. the reason these have risen recent decades is that the spousal formulas tend to be concentrated among those with higher earnings. families with low earnings have little choice but to send both couples' back to work in order to make and me. many workers have to surrender so much more of their earnings to cover social security and their own retirement savings and health insurance costs that economic circumstances leave them no choice but that both spouses have to work to cover family needs. for most workers today, the spousal benefit has little or no economic value, but renders the treatment and fair relative to those who benefit from it and pay nothing extra for it. either we should quit the pretense that social security is redistributive, as congress has

done repeatedly, we should actually make the actual formula fit the stated intent. another benefit that is important and should be considered in modernizing social security is the introduction of the true joint and survivor benefit from married couples. the operation of the spousal benefit partially covers this void now, but pipa joining it's inequitable existence -- by perpetuating its inequitable existence, today, a couple receives little or no benefit in consideration of the deceased spouse's income and participation in social security. this makes the benefit in single earner couples in may -- and even more glaring problem. in 1983, private employer pensions offered joint survivor benefit and the on the way it could be waived was by both persons actually waiting the benefit. it can be financed within the

structure of the benefit itself. it does not have to ad expenditures or securities cost. it would modernize it and make it more equitable. >> thank you, sir. mr. terry, you may proceed. >> i am glad to be here this morning. i am here representing the american academy of actuaries. we are an organization of roughly 17,000 members, whose mission is to serve the public on behalf of the u.s. actuarial profession. in my five minutes of live like to talk about actuaries and the role of actuaries in assessing the solvency and sustainability of financial systems, and i would like to talk about a position that the american academy of actuaries has advocated, that is, that the social security retirement age be increased. first, about actuaries.

actuaries go about evaluating the business of complex financial systems, and we do that by construction -- constructing models. they are designed to gauge the long-term solvency and sustainability of these financial systems. we go about that by looking at the system from the standpoint of the principles the thing to be functioning in that system and the assumptions that support that. the reason we do that is that we then turn around and we project those principles into the future based on a certain set of assumptions. as you know, there is talk about actuarial imbalances in the social security system. those calculations are not here and our assessments because as you know, there is a $2.60 trillion assessment. this is a longer-term imbalance that we talk about. it is actuary principles and assumptions that give

transparency into that sort of in balance. therefore, what we do as actuaries is we examine those principles and test those assumptions. one of the key principles, for example, that the social security system operates on is that the current colewort of workers will support the current cohort of retirees. that is one of the foundational principles for the system. one of the assumptions gone into that system is that right from the start, longevity was a relatively fixed notion, as the chairman indicated, back in 1937. longevity was what it was then. for people at birth, their life expectancy was 64. for those who reached age 65, their life expectancy at that point was 12 years. fast forward to today, night-

life expectancy for 65 year-old is roughly 18 years. that is a 50% increase over 1937. this brings us to my second point, which is the american academy of actuaries and our position around retirement age. we at the academy have examined and explored all sorts of suggestions, options, alternatives for closing that imbalance, closing the long term 75-year in balance. one of the reasons that has risen to the top of a list that we look at for increasing the retirement age is because we believe it was an assumption, at fixed assumption back in 1937 that deserves re-evaluation today. every actuarial forecast that has been done since then has been updated and anticipated improvement in longevity.

including in the current time frame that takes into account this 50% improvement in longevity. to restore balance to the system and to maintain that balance between the working years and the retirement years. the academy believes it is karimov that at the top of any list of reform items -- it is paramount that at the top of any list of reform items, an increase in retirement age has to appear. we are mindful of the fact that any change to the system has to be done with respect to what objectives we are trying to achieve, the impact on your term as well as long term retirees. there will always be consequences to any change, and to any extent that there are consequences, they may need to be mitigated. we are well aware of that. we stand ready to help evaluate any proposals that may come forward that appear in any sort of reform package. those are my remarks. >> thank you very much.

sterly, you may proceed. >> since social security was first enacted, vast changes have occurred in both the economy and life expectancy, health care, and labor force participation of women. we cannot just things by where we were at in 1930. that does not mean that social security has not been a great success. it has, but it is not serving as as well as a good. consider the following, if you take into account retirement age, social security provides about $555,000 worth of lifetime benefits to the average retiring couple today.

if we count medicare, it is over $1 million. it is about $1.3 million. what we are talking about is a growth in benefits that we are trying to constrain so we can stay in a reasonable system, not cutting back on couples. basically, younger and younger people, relative to their life expected that are getting benefits. it discourages work among older individuals. they are encouraged to spend on their retirement income too soon. it discriminates against the single working head of household, which is largely women, against the lardon term worker and many others. -- the long term worker and many others. these are just that the design features that do not meet the needs of today, and are not well

targeted. in my testimony i will talk about four different types of reforms that are important to consider. one is, sadly to figure always to try to restrict the growth in benefits -- simply to figure out ways to try to restrict the growth in benefits. it is not necessarily cutting dacron and number of years, but limit the where the system is -- cutting back on the number of years, but the machine where the system is out of -- limiting where the system is out of balance. there is discrimination, largely in single heads of household, more often working women, abandoned mothers, who do not have access to about one-quarter of the system in which they pay into. i would like to think about some pension reform to extend pension to lower income people.

we talk about restricting growth when the system is out of balance. if congress were to rule that social security and medicare are out of bounds, and we will cap off of them at $1 million per couple for benefits, it would bring things in balance. i would gradually adjust the retirement age to take into account that people are living longer and longer. it is not well concentrated where people's needs are the greatest. i would also increase benefits -- i would also decrease benefits for higher-income people. i mentioned in the testimony that i would try to encourage greater labor force participation. that is where retirement age is very important.

it also includes mainly the early retirement age. increasing retirement age does little on social security on this, but does allow for income tax revenues. how it helps us deal with this demographic issue where about one-third of adults are being urged to be on social security. i also suggest ways of improving the equity in the system, including designing strong minimum benefits to help lower income people, actuarial neutrality and surviving spouse of benefits because that is a major problem in sigel had households. and finally, some private pension reform under security so we get some payments for this broad social cost of this not have early retirement. that ad like to say th

definition of a pessimist is someone who when he smells flowers, looks around for a casket. you are having to run a by who is going to pay for the government either through lower benefits or higher taxes. the problems that we met in the past cannot be met. if we take this straitjacket of ourselves, we are actually freeing of ourselves, and you as the congress, to put resources toward those that we consider to be the most important in society. thank you. >> thank you, sir. >> i will shift focus from the budget of the social security program to what it means for those who rely on it. two out of three of those 65 years old get most of their income from social security and

for one out of three is their only source of income. that is particularly striking when you consider the average is just 14,000 of interest per year for retired -- $14,000 per year for retired americans, and just $12,000 per year for women. total median income is less than $21,000 per year. genet in oregon is living on about that right now. and she is a widow, living alone. she worked until age 73, but her only income apart from as little help from her adult children is for social security check. her benefit is about $27,000 per year, so actually higher than average. it is still hard for her to make ends meet. forget cable-tv or new clothing.

what about food? she explained she cannot afford meat anymore. but once in awhile when she sees a great bargain she will splurge on a small piece of meat. there is a discount cheese that she likes. i make very thin slices, she says. slicing that she's very thin can maybe stretch your food budget to the end of the month. it will not cover health care. a couple of months ago, she told us, my dentist and said i needed a root canal. i am taking a chance with my health, but i do not know what else i can do. i cannot afford to do that right now. not a lot of room to cut. social security benefits are already scheduled to decline. the retirement age is going up right now. it has already increased from 65 to 66, and rising to 67. every year there is an increase in the retirement age is an across-the-board benefit cut of about 7% at whatever age the people take their benefits.

in addition, rising medicare premiums will consume a greater portion of retiree's social security income. on top of that and other sources of other retirement income are declining, and the recession has made things worse. this adds up to a compelling case for protecting and strengthening social security benefits. there are a number of proposals out there that would cut social security benefits even for current retirees, and those near retirement. i was very pleased to hear your statement about the bipartisan support for protecting those people. for example, switching to the chain to c.p.i. for calculating the cost of living adjustment for social security would cut benefits for current beneficiaries. they would produce deeper cuts with every year of benefits received. this change would particularly yet women because they live longer than men, are more reliant on social security, and

are already at much greater risk of party as they age. those who say that those cuts will not -- risk of poverty as they age. those who say that those cuts will not hurt, are not on solely social security. those that have had cuts in recent years have lost a week of food every month, for those who rely solely on social security. restoring solvency to the social security program by slashing the benefits that people need to live is like fixing a step to go by cutting off a foot. -- a stubbed its toe by cutting off a foot. the republican study committee proposal to speed up the increase in the retirement age and bills that are pending on the senate side to accelerate

that increase would cut benefits for people currently between the ages of 55 and 60. in addition, the safe act introduced by rep sessions, which would allow the diversion of payroll taxes into a private account would simultaneously worsen trust fund's solvency and jeopardize benefits for current retirees, and jeopardize not only the retirement benefits for workers who choose their accounts, but disability and life insurance protection for their families. i recognize that it is important to make adjustments sooner than later, but this committee has the time to make those adjustments right so that people do not get hurt. >> thank you, ma'am. " dr. white house, you are recognized. >> thank you for the honor of

testifying today. boeing to time constraints, i will bypass most of the written testimony and are for the nine suggested rules of thumb for you to consider. the first is simple, act soon. the balance of any benefit for any tax changes is a very important value judgment, but whatever the balance is chosen, will be better off if that is enacted sooner. the longer use the leia action, the more these changes are quite to be concentrated on -- the longer you delay action, the more these changes are going to be concentrated on a smaller court. the second is the question of changing benefits at all. my recommendation would be, yes. otherwise the my gambert generations will be facing far higher social security -- otherwise, a younger generations will be facing far higher social security tax burdens than ever before. under the current benefit

formula, it would rise to over 17% by the mid 2030's. we would be trying to pay benefits that are rising very dramatically in per-capita terms relative to inflation. today, a retiree gets about $18,000 per year. the current formula is trying to pay them in 2050 a benefit of about $29,000 per year, and that is after adjusting for inflation. if we adjust the rate of growth now, benefits can still rise in real terms. they do not have to be cut from today's levels, but if we leave the current formula in place, we actually run the risk of decline as higher taxes are required to sustain current schedules. we also need to realize demographic realities. our population is aging rapidly. and we have established for early retirement. people are retiring earlier and

in a higher annual benefits and living longer. something has to give. we would have to raise both the early and normal retirement ages by at least three years just to get back to the starting point where the typical beneficiary was climbing at 65. -- claiming at 65. fourth, make any changes as rapidly as you can to be fully effective before 2035. the vast majority of the cost growth in the system will play out before 2035. for that is what we have the 70% cost rate. after that, they are relatively flat until the 2070's. any changes made after a 25-2045 will not do much to address the tax burdens of -- any changes made after 2035 will not do much to address the tax burdens of the generation at that time. in the 21st century, we have a future economic growth jeopardized by skilled baby

boomers still in the work force. we should increase the award ford of clay -- delayed planes appeared and we should offer something to make retirement credit more attractive. right now, the way currently works is that the longer you work and the more your average earnings rise, the lower your incremental returns on your social security contributions. i believe we should redesign that so it provides proportional benefits for every year for seniors. fifth, obviously, the higher the benefits, the less that is left over for the vulnerable population. the seventh rule of thumb, maintain the benefit link. do not means test. there is a distinction to be drawn between and more progressive benefit formula,

which i favor, and a true means test, which i do not. the former requires no new administrative capabilities. and it does not sever this bottling between contributions and benefits during a distinguishes social security from welfare. 8, maintain the link between retirement and disability benefits. it is based on the retirement formula and is in my judgment important. it prevents gaming the system and provides for a smooth transition once an individual reaches retirement age. and the ninth row of them, avoid unnecessary complexity duquesne. not every -- the ninth rule of thumb, avoid unnecessary complexity if you can. you cannot ask the c.p.i. to handle that for you. set the retirement age for the general case that reflect population aging. it said the cpi to reflect --

set the c.p.i. to reflect the overall population. >> we can tell people to stop getting older. [laughter] thank you. doctor, you may proceed. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for inviting me today. you have heard others speak about ways to stabilize social security's financial future. you have me to address one of the most important vehicles for explaining the social security program, and that is the individualized social security statement. the statement is the main document for the government to communicate with more than 150 million workers about their social security benefits. it also serves as a key financial literacy tool to educate the public and its provision is mandated in law. shourd changes take place to the program, the state would take on added importance as a means to explain them. my testimony will address the

current status of the statement and as as a's plans to improve its usefulness. improvesa's plans to its usefulness. with regard to status, the statement is not currently being distributed. ssa used to mail this statement to virtually all americans annually until a few months ago when . instead, they're preparing to make it available on line and have begun developing a web portal for this purpose. but both the portal and the online version are in development. as a result kamal ssa officials are uncertain -- as a result, ssa officials are uncertain as to when it will be available. we estimate is next year.

we have a picture of the web page on the front of our testimony. although useful, it does not fill the same function as the statement. getting thatn statement on line and the information it contains is really important, but these elements of the statement should not be the only concern to the agency. for example, ssa will need plans in place for publicizing the availability of the statement on line. they are considering options for the public rollout of the on line statement, but have not yet developed a plan for carrying it out. it also need to consider how best to provide this information to people without internet access. even the relatively few computers available in selective field offices will not necessarily permit access to the online statement itself. and individuals without computers may not know to go there to look for it.

they also want to make the online version in spanish, but the initial version will be in which only. let me turn to improving the usefulness of the statement. ssa officials have told me they believed it has advantages for individuals, including immediate access when it is needed and not just when it arrives in the mail. they can also provide links to related documents and thereby provide complete information, and minimize the lengthy description in the statement itself. they also plan to dry out -- draw on industry best practices to make the system more user- friendly. and although they are planning such changes, the first publicly released version of the on line statement sometime next year will be nearly identical to the current print version. this means sticking with the limited graphics and layout that we felt should have been modernized years ago. officials told us that they did not plan to change the content

because so much of it is statutory required. however, we notified them in our 2005 report that focus group partisans were confused by it. -- participants were confused by it. it is unclear what role the office has played in the design of the online statement thus far. in conclusion, ssa's decision to suspend mailing this year could negatively affect millions of americans now, but could ultimately have a positive effect in the delivery of this information. but the suspicion -- the decision to suspend was made so abruptly, efforts have to be made to restore availability. but that is not even our greatest concern. of the lack of preparation for providing all american workers,

including those without computer resources and those without english proficiency with an understandable version of the statement risks leaving a significant number of are population without information about social security at a time when changes to the social security are more important than ever. the statement remains an important tool for communicating with all workers. that concludes my statement. >> thank you very much. i appreciate that. we are struggling to meet a vote deadline here this morning. i would like everyone to have a chance to ask questions. and i will limit my time to five minutes and asked the ranking member to do the same.

mr. terry, your organization endorses risk-taking when the actuaries raise the retirement age. you say, we cannot encourage people to work longer and it makes no sense to me to attack someone who does not want to work, and who we as a nation may need to work. in other words, we may not want to tax them when they get past a certain age. why not encourage older workers by freeing them of their charges security payroll tax that taxes the very first dollar of income? it makes sense to me, and it must make sense to you because you mentioned in your remarks. how much would this boost

boulder will alert -- older workers will in this -- how much would this boost older worker's willingness to work? how would this benefit our country, mr. terry? >> i like the way you posed the question because i think you are suggesting that is not simply a matter of forcing people to do something they do not want to do. if we make, in fact, have impediments' inadvertently set up to prevent people from working longer. if work is thought of as drudgery from which people must escape and social security is the savior for that escape, that i think that is a flawed premise. i think the premise of your question is, in fact, it may well be a removal of disincentives to work that could

encourage this sort of increase in productivity out of the work force that we could all benefit from. the academy does not have an exact position around the elimination of payroll taxes or the cutting back of payroll taxes for older workers. it is something that could be on the table and we would be happy to take a look at that and examine it. the we have not done that yet, but we could. >> why don't you? >> yes,. -- yes, we will. >> good. the social security statement reminds workers how much they have paid into social security benefits and gives an estimate of what those benefits might be. dr. goldberg, could social security choose not to provide a statement to workers, or is it

required by law? >> the law says that the social security administration must provide a social security statement to individuals age 25 and over. how that statement is provided and whether it is mail or on- line is something the social security is considering right now. >> you do not think that they violated the law when they did not send one in the mail? >> we do not have an opinion. if we prefer to let courts make those decisions. we do think it is very important that people get this statement. when the decision was made in the spring not to mail the stedman anymore, to cancel the contract -- not to mail the statement any more, to cancel the contract, it was made for budgetary reasons. but there could be a full calendar year in which statement are not going out. >> what does the law require?

and did they do it online? >> we have not seen what they are putting on line yet. but what they have in the current statement, which was produced in the back of my written testimony is a sure what your earnings record is, they estimate your future benefits, they talk about the offset of supply for public employees in the railroad industry. there are many things that social security must include. we do not dispute that. we are concerned about how they are explained. >> thank you very much. mr. buss sarah, you are recognized for five minutes. >> i suspect we will be calling on all of you for your ideas, whether it is 9 points, or one. into the future. -- or one point into the future.

the story you recounted of the woman in oregon sound eerily familiar to the stories i hear from too many in my congressional district in los angeles, where the costs are probably higher than for the woman you mentioned in oregon. if you take a look over the lifetime, and if someone lives into their 80s or 90s, that is quite a few years of collecting $13,000, $14,000 per year. >> $12,000 for women. >> you are right, we have to address that in balance. and if you put in medicaid, it is a good check -- a chunk of money. $14,000, as you mentioned, is not much to start with. how do you see this going?

if we get to the point of trying to deal with making social security stronger into the future so that my kids and their kids know that it will be there for them the way it is for today's seniors, and i expect, for me, what should we be doing to tell our constituents that social security will be as strong tomorrow as it is today? >> i think there are two separate problems that need to be looked at separately, although they are often talked about together. it is social security and medicare and medicaid. health care costs are on a trajectory of increase that is unsustainable. it is not just the federal health programs. health care costs in the federal programs are rising someone left -- somewhat more slowly than health-care costs in the private sector. there is a real need to control the growth of health care costs

to see where we can find really efficiencies without in keating benefits in the quality of care. impeding benefits in the quality of care. if you look at the growth curve for social security benefits, as the chairman pointed out in his announcement of this hearing, they will increase to about 2.6% of gdp in 2025. after that, they actually declined slightly and stay stable. for the next 75 years. and when it comes to social security, we are dealing with the fact of an aging population, although the chief actuary pointed out it is really more that there are not as young -- as many young people as there used to be. how do we deal with that? i think there are fair

resolutions on the wage side. i think the wage base for social security is very low. we tax a much smaller percentage of wages than we have taxed in the last several decades. a lot of compensation now is outside of social security. and we are taxing a small portion of gdp. i think there are revenue solutions. mr. ross testified about some of them in his testimony a couple of weeks ago. the national academy of social insurance and a paper i've site in my written testimony lists other ways to get money for social security. across the political spectrum, and this includes people who support the tea party, they support raising revenue to close the deficit. you would not be surprised to find people across the political

spectrum who oppose cuts to benefits, but they also support increasing revenues to support the program. i suggest that as a place to look. >> we have got to look at these numbers. you mentioned the $2.6 trillion trust fund and how we address the long term life of social security. i pulled out the $20 bill. i pulled out the savings bonds, and i guess i could have pulled out the treasury certificate that the social security system house. what is your sense of the debt ceiling? where is your impact on the $20 bill, the savings bond my dollar has -- my daughter has come or the treasury certificate?

>> we actuaries are focused on the social security system itself. our realm of focus is the system itself. second, we are in the midst of preparing a detailed discussion brief, if you will, of the very question you ask about the trust funds. is the money real, it did not real? what are the attributes of it that can inform some of our thinking about that $2.6 trillion? we are close to putting the finishing touches on that and we will get back to you. >> thank you. mr. byrd, you are recognized for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, i really do not know where to start. i am extremely frustrated about the rhetoric on this issue. we have heard today the accusations of republican plans that will ruin proposals. none of those will come before this committee. none of them.

the president has recognized this is an issue that should be talked about and debated. everyone i talk to in north dakota is concerned about social security. i think it has been used as a political football by people with different interests all along. i sit here today and say, well, we have $2.6 trillion. nothing to worry about. the reality is, to redeem those dollars, it comes from the general fund. why are we in this debt crisis? because we have 14 $0.3 million -- we have $14.3 trillion in debt. it is crazy to say we should ignore this problem. i am not here to say we want to use social security to fund our deficit. but quite frankly, it has got to be fixed. we are spending more in the general fund than we are taking in. i came here to honor this promise to our seniors.

i am here to honor that. i am very frustrated when i sit here and say, you know what, and do not worry. we are good for 25 years and at the end of 25 years, it is only going to grow 25%. we talked about the woman in oregon. 25% goes for $15,000. if we are concerned about these things, why are we ignoring them? i appreciate everyone's perspective. the point is, they could do in the statements. why? they are saying, for budget reasons. everyone i have talked to that looks at this says there is a problem. my question is pretty simple. that is, i would like each of you to say what the facts are. why should we look at this? give me a fact of his non disputable on why we should be spending our time -- that is indisputable on why we should be

spending our time on fixing social security in this way? >> the time perspective in which this system will run out of money if we do not do anything is within the life expectancy, roughly, of people who are retiring today. it is an issue that will affect almost everyone who is stepping into retirement today. it is also well with in the life expectancy of everyone who is working, or the overwhelming majority of people who are working. the trust fund will be depleted under the projections. there will still be tax revenues coming in. the trust funds will run out of money. it is within the people today who are here participating in the program. we ought to fix it before we get to the cliff. you do not put the brakes on at

the cliff. if you put the brakes on as you are coming to the cliff. >> i would echo that, and what i think other panelists have said this morning, too, about the need to address it now rather than later. to suggest that there is not an issue is to suggest that there is nothing to address right now. the academy believe that, in fact, actions should be taken out to address the long-range deficit. but two quick comments. one is, there are many features of social security that are badly targeted. a lot of low-income, a particularly single heads of household or discriminated against. the fact that so much money is now concentrated so much earlier in life, so a typical couple is getting benefits for close to 27 years, going on three decades. that is not a good system.

they need to have more concentration of benefits later in life. even if the system was totally in balance. what happened in the trust funds is that while baby boomers were temporarily in the work force, they were taken -- they were paying about $1 for every 90 cents that was paid out. it was a pay-as-you-go system. basically today, for every dollar going in, in dollar is going out. and it moves to about $1.25 roughly. that is the simple math that we are dealing with for the pay-as- you-go system. the trust fund is going in the opposite direction. that is what is driving the system, largely because of the decline in the birthrate and the decline in the number of workers per beneficiaries. the solution is to be there? the beneficiaries more or take -- is to tax the workers more

or take away some of the benefit for beneficiaries. >> time is running out. i will let each of you answer briefly. >> i agree that action should be taken. in 1983, congress waited until social security was within a few months of exhausting the trust fund, and that is not an experience that i think anyone wants to repeat. right now, people pay social security taxes only on their first $106,800 of income. when you explain that for people that the vast majority do not pay taxes on every single dollar that they earn, they are shocked. and the attitude across the spectrum is that people should pay of a social security taxes on more of their income. that would go a long way in helping benefits.

>> social security as an imbalance. their own books are out of bounds over the long term. there is an imbalance in promises relative to incoming revenues. it is best to close that sooner rather than later. you get the best possible outcomes. you get the least fear outcomes if you wait till later. if we do wait until we are close to a trust fund depletion, there is no historical precedent for closing, one of that magnitude. in 1983, income and outflow were still pretty close together. but we are rapidly getting to a point where they will be much further apart. there is no historical precedent for closing the shortfall of the size it will be by the time this trust fund is run down. >> social security touches the lives of nearly every american. is a crucially important program. years, gio has

been talking about the structural imbalance and it is impossible to avoid horrible choices later on that will hurt people dramatically. we have been arguing that having this discussion -- and i congratulate the subcommittee for having this hearing and raising these issues is really important. but we do need to make decisions and everything should be on the table. >> mr. smith, you are recognized. >> you had earlier started to touch on private pension reform toward the end of your remarks. could you elaborate? >> in great britain a few years ago cannot they undertook -- a few years ago, they undertook a social security reform. in typical british way, they had a white paper study on what they should do and concluded that it would be useful to try to

increase private savings at the same time that they did social security reform. it actually increased benefits in the public system. but even there, they decided that it was not enough. it is probably because the index did at a slower rate. they decided that in order to help a broad swath of people we needed to build up private pension savings. if you look at the private pension system, it covers fairly poorly most of the population. an estimate i did a few years ago -- i have not quite of dated, but basically of 70% of those who retire, the lifetime expenditure is close to $1 million. that is in excess of their home, private accounts, everything. a large number are dependent upon social security and medicare. how do we deal with it? one way is to try to, perhaps,

increase some of those cash benefits for lower and moderate income people. but for the middle income people, i do not think we can get there by having to system that is out of balance already. we need to work on private saving. this private retirement system that we have set up is not doing a good job of covering the vast majority of people. when you get into the question of who is to blame -- is it the employers not doing it correctly or the employees not saving enough? it is beside the question. we need to enhance the savings of middle income people as they advanced toward retirement. >> thank you. you mentioned that there are public -- there is public support for increases in revenues. put you elaborate? >> raising the cap on taxable wages is certainly one option that is very popular.

but there are also polls in which people say they would pay more in social security taxes to strengthen the benefits the people rely on. this is one area of tax where people say they do not mind paying social security taxes because they know what they are getting for it and they would pay more to protect social security. in the past, congress, in terms of automatically legislating for the needs in the future, there have been scheduled, small increases in the payroll tax way into the future to make sure social security stays in dallas. this is something the public says they support. -- tuesday in balance. this is something the public says they support. again, i am not saying wait until the last minute. i agree with chuck that it would be bad to wait. but i think that if there was a process of public education about how we are strengthening

the program, making it more adequate, and yes, everyone will be chatting in a little more. and people who are very wealthy will be chipping in a little more. i do not know if it can be done without increases far in the future and the payroll tax rate, but this is what the american people say they want. they want a stronger social security system and they wanted to be paid for. decressin and when you say wealthier, what would determine that -- >> and when you say wealthier, would determine that? >> everyone who makes above $107,000 is not contributing to social security -- >> [unintelligible] >> you are quite right. is that income above that amount plus other benefits that are not part of the social security base. >> thank you. i yield back. >> thank you.

mr. marchand, you are recognized. >> in the last 24 hours we have begun to hear a lot about the concept of changed cpi instead of the traditional cola method. but each of the panelists talked a little bit about that concept may be described to the public -- could each of the panelists talked a little bit about this concept, maybe describe to the public why this concept is important? >> there has been debate about the cpi come out about what the appropriate c.p.i. is almost from the time we have linked benefits to it. there is concern in the market about what basket is used relative to the goods we

consume. they argue between the change to c.p.i. and the current cpi. in the current cpi, many people do not believe that when we consider the price of a good -- let's take a car -- if the price of in the city's goes up, maybe you do not -- a price of a mercedes goes up, maybe you do not buy that, but an audi. it is overstating what the true cost of living is. it extends beyond things like cars it extends on down. the argument is that c.p.i. more closely reflects the cost of what living is over time. the problem with any basket is that if you take any specific

individual, they probably do not consume that particular market basket. it is an estimation to try to get as close as we can to a reasonable rate of increase in the cost of living for people. the argument is being made on technical grounds that we should move from the current system to an alternative system. >> the actuarial profession will lead to the question of what the proper mix of what goes into the basket of consumer goods to accurately measure inflation and its indices. but i will say that we are aware that a changed c.p.i. will likely produce a lower level of inflation, and lower to the point that if it were to be implemented and used in the cost

of waiting adjustments, it could be used to cover other imbalances in the system. >> i am in favor of coming up with a good measure of c.p.i., but if you do it by itself it causes a problem and social security. that is because for people who have not retired yet, the cpi does not affect their growth in adjusted benefits. the c.p.i. hits people once they retire. in the first year of retirement, if you have a small adjustment in my be one-third of 1%. that compounds. if you're retired for 20 or 30 years, the person who is 80 or 90 off has up to a 10% cut. i want to increase benefits at older ages when we are not having such a negative work

disincentive and cut back on benefits at an earlier age. my problem with doing a c.p.i. only without worrying about that issue is that i want to protect the really old for whom there is not much work incentive because they cannot. on top of it got older people are just more needy. >> the problem with switching to the change the cpi for social security is that this is a program that overwhelmingly serves people who are elderly and people with disabilities. it also serves some children, but the vast majority of .eneficiary thesare older people if they spend twice as much of their budget on health care. that is for all people 65 and

older. for people 75 and older, they spend 2.5 as much as consumers generally on health care. the reason that matters when you are trying to figure out what a fair cost of living adjustment is, health care costs of prize so much faster than everything else. if you are already spending a bigger share of your budget, a cost of living adjustment that may be fair for other purposes or other people is really systematically unfair to the elderly. in fact, the bureau of labor statistics -- >> your time has expired. finish your statement. >> the bureau of labor statistics has a special cpi for the elderly. the current cost of living index underestimates the cost of living experiences of the

elderly. >> thank you once again for hosting this very important hearing on a very important topic. once again, it appears there are some in this room that believe in the policy of the ostrich, stick your head in the sand long enough and it will go away. the reality is we have a problem. i think the doctor may be the best to answer this. we hear about the fund eventually running out remind me again, for our listeners, how many years is that estimated to be? >> about 25 years. >> you say that is assuming somebody is healthy and in good shape --

>> you'll be around 50. >> lord willing. in 2036, we deplete the assets. in 2037, if your recipient of benefits and you are to get a thousand dollars per month, what happens? >> the next month, you will get $750. >> and that goes for a year? >> you would get a monthly check. >> right, but the first year after which we deplete the assets, we go down to 77% of being able to meet liabilities. so the second year, what happens, we have accrued basically 23% of last year's liability is that we have not been able to pay. so now the second year, what happens? >> under current law, social security cannot borrow money.

so social security would be making payments at that juncture, most people assume, at the rate in which money would be coming in. and the rates are projected to be relatively constant. so it would govern all along somewhere around 75%, 78%, in that window. of course, if we have a happy experience, which we may have some time in the future like the last couple of years, and revenue drops significantly, then it may not be 75%. maybe 60%. no guarantees. >> and so i guess what i am having a hard time understanding is why do we continue to send statements to people who may be around 50 years from now to tell them to expect a certain benefit when we know today the truth to be that

under the current system, they can not, they should not based their retirement on the current expectation? >> the state and has included generally a comment to the effect that the system is underfunded and that congress either has to do something or benefits could be reduced in the future. but the reason they cannot send out a statement to people who are 50 years old today or 40 years old today and say, by the way, here is one calculation, but your benefit will really only be 70%, 80% of that is because of the letters that those of you sitting at this table would get in response. >> but isn't that the truth? isn't current law you. based on the current assets and

2036, they will only get 77%? >> there are two aspects to the current law. one is the revenue aspect, defining how much will be collected, and then the benefit formula aspect to it. the law says something right now that is inconsistent in these segments of its corpus. the general public, i don't think, has a complete appreciation of what is going on. i think generally they know something is wrong, but we go off and we propose to them that there is some magical, simple solution. we hear all the time about the surveys, the public would like to pay more for social security rather than having benefits cuts. and how would delight that done? tax people earning more than $106,000. that is not the american people, that is not the american workers paying for this. and if you look at table to in my presentation, the people that

want to raise taxes on are already getting back fifty cents on the dollar, less than fifty cents on the dollar of what they contributed. fdr thought it was wrong, the early architects of thought it was wrong, and they thought these low rates of return on the system is wrong. what they're talking about doing is exacerbating it. the american people, we hear, are willing to pay more taxes to support this program. >> i see my time has expired, but it seems to me we send out a statement which we know to be false undercurrent law, my last statement said when i retire 40 years from now, i should plan based on my current and come to receive 3000 less per month. then it said, but is social security in trouble? no, and went in to say that under current law is required to

meet current obligations and on and on. all i am suggesting is for someone who is not in congress and it does not serve on the ways and means committee, the social security committee and is not privy to the statement by which they are sent by the social security administration, i think it is disingenuous, wrong, misinformation and somewhat of a ponzi scheme that we send people to jail for in the real world. i appreciate the chairman's continuation on this subject and i look forward to working with him and our ranking member when we realize we have a problem and tries to help us fix it. thank you. >> i realize the problem, but it is not social security. listen, i want to thank each and everyone of you for your comments. i think this as beneficial to all of us. thank you for being here today.

we know and 2036, according to you, 75% -- congress and president need to find common sense solutions to make social security secure, sustainable, and the sooner we do so, the sooner we can protect those most vulnerable. with that, i think you all for being here, and all of our members and committee stands adjourned. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> sunday, congressman jim jordan, chairman of the republican study committee, talks about the budget and debt ceiling negotiations. it is a group of more than 175 house republicans and organize to advance a conservative, social, and economic agenda and the house. that is sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> who is really going to get fired? they are proxies', shorthand for the incredibly narrow range of choice that we have been political but elected officials. >> in the declaration of independence, editor and chief nick gillespie takes on the problems of today's two-party system and possible libertarian

solutions. that is sunday night. >> yesterday, former first lady betty ford died at the age of 93 in california. 14 years ago, in 1997, mrs. ford spoke about her husband and her years in washington as he served in the u.s. house and white house. she also talks about her role as advocate for cancer and those suffering from addiction. this is 25 minutes. >> it is an honor for me to be here today at the richard nixon library and birthplace. my husband and i enjoyed a very long standing and deep relationship with dick and pat nixon, which goes back to january 1949.

being here today in this magnificent building that pays tribute to our wonderful good friend is a very special honor. it is also a very touching moment for me because we have been here on many occasions that were not quite so happy. on january 3 of that year, 1949, my husband took his first oath of office in the house of representatives. i sat in the gallery and we were just newly married at that time. i was very proud as he raised his hand and swore to serve this country. interesting enough, what i remember so vividly that date is watching another young man, young congressman, approached jerry to congratulate and

welcome them as a new member of congress. that young man was richard nixon. that moment began a friendship that has been treasured for many long years. as i think back about the years that were so political active, i realize that the event that had the biggest impact on my life was the day my husband took the oath of office as president of the united states. nothing can compare to that moment. i did write about it in my book. i wrote about it as the saddest day of my life. president nixon had resigned and the first family were leaving the white house. it is a day that i will never forget. today has provided me an opportunity to reflect on our many years in washington and all the wonderful times we experienced which led to the

privilege of are serving in the white house. before my husband and i ever started our journey to that wonderful a historic house, everything was quite different. jerry's : congress was always to become speaker of the house of representatives. in 1973, jerry began talking about serving one more term and then retiring. that sounded like the most wonderful idea to me. [laughter] as we began our planning, it never dawned on us that outside influences might rearrange our plans, and not just slightly. when president nixon was considering his selection for a

new vice president following mr. agnew's resignation, i was very aware that my husband was on the list for consideration. i did not give it any serious thought. i was sure his position at the republican leader was much too valuable to president nixon for him to be a contender. the ford family, we went about business as usual. everybody but our daughter susan. she was totally convinced that he was going to be packed. we humored her. your father is certainly the best man for the job. we were very sure that he was wrong. we had some balance on we had some balance on president